The Plurality of Shakespeare's Sonnets

Abstract

For at least two and a half centuries Shakespeare’s Sonnets have suffered from the attentions of readers who have falsely assumed imaginary biographical contexts and have lazily accepted mistaken assumptions about the poems. Their originality has still not been adequately acknowledged. They have too often been read as if their aims were identical to those of sonnet sequences of the 1590s. Critics and biographers have persisted in writing about ‘the Dark Lady’ and ‘the Young Man’, figments of (initially) an eighteenth-century biographical sensibility, and one which continues to hold too much sway in sonnet criticism. Unquestionably Shakespeare’s Sonnets invite biographical readings. But biographical readings of any kind – like political and multi-cultural interpretations – are only at best a by-product of a poem’s literary impact. This article falls into five sections. In the first we revisit and assert the originality of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, particularly by questioning the notion that they follow any model set by writers of sonnet sequences in the 1590s. For this reason, we consciously refer to Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a collection rather than a sequence. Second, we attempt to identify critical cobwebs that need sweeping away. In our view too many biographical accounts of Shakespeare’s life, as well as critical discussions of the Sonnets, lazily assuming that the Sonnets tell some kind of discernible story about real or imagined protagonists, attempt to identify real people behind the poems. Third, while not wanting to deny the possible relevance of the Sonnets to Shakespeare’s life, we argue that this should be thought of in relation to limited and precise biographical readings of individual poems. Fourth, we wish to interrogate the common terms ‘the Dark Lady’, ‘the young man’ and ‘the rival poet’. Finally, we make the plea for all approaches to the Sonnets to focus on the poems themselves, rather than on assumptions about their interrelationships.