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William Shakespeare |
Sometime after 1585, when William Shakespeare was twenty-one, he left his wife and three children in Stratford and traveled to London. When he returned to Stratford twenty-five years later he had become a successful actor, a wealthy theater owner, and the world’s greatest poet. His verse brought new grace and gravity to the language. His insights into the comedy and tragedy of life were counsel to kings and commoners alike. His plays were lean, clever, and full of large, multidimensional characters like Othello, Falstaff, and Henry V, perhaps because he was writing the roles for his good friends to play.
But his sonnets were largely unknown. The earliest ones (1-126) are thought to have been written to a “fair youth” when Shakespeare was in his late twenties—still more an actor than a writer. They were published without his consent in 1609 when his great success as a playwright was waning, and then they were forgotten. It was a hundred years before their power and beauty were discovered again.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
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Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |