Shakespeare Sonnets: All 154 Sonnets With Explanations✔️ (2024)

Take your pick of Shakespeare’s sonnets below, along with a modern English interpretation of each one aid understanding.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets published in his ‘quarto’ in 1609, covering themes such as the passage of time, mortality, love, beauty, infidelity, and jealousy. The first 126 of Shakespeare’s sonnets are addressed to a young man, and the last 28 addressed to a woman – a mysterious ‘dark lady’.

Jump to a section: Read all sonnets | Famous sonnets |Publishing the sonnets | Sonnet dedications

What is a Shakespearean sonnet?

Shakespeare’s sonnets are poems of expressive ideas and thoughts that are layered with multiple meanings, and always have two things in common:

1. All sonnets have fourteen lines

2. All sonnets are written in iambic pentameter

Read more about what a sonnet is, and iambic pentameter.

Read all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets

Take your pick from the list of Shakespeare sonnets below (or learn how to write a sonnet of your own!):

Sonnet 1: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase

Sonnet 2: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow

Sonnet 3: Look In Thy Glass, And Tell The Face Thou Viewest

Sonnet 4: Unthrifty Loveliness, Why Dost Thou Spend

Sonnet 5: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame

Sonnet 6: Then Let Not Winter’s Ragged Hand Deface

Sonnet 7: Lo! In The Orient When The Gracious Light

Sonnet 8: Music To Hear, Why Hear’st Thou Music Sadly?

Sonnet 9: Is It For Fear To Wet A Widow’s Eye

Sonnet 10: For Shame Deny That Thou Bear’st Love To Any

Sonnet 11: As Fast As Thou Shalt Wane, So Fast Thou Grow

Sonnet 12: When I Do Count The Clock That Tells Time

Sonnet 13: O! That You Were Your Self! But, Love, You Are

Sonnet 14: Not From The Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck

Sonnet 15: When I Consider Everything That Grows

Sonnet 16: But Wherefore Do Not You A Mightier Way

Sonnet 17: Who Will Believe In My Verse In Time To Come

Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?

Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, Blunt Thou The Lion’s Paw

Sonnet 20: A Woman’s Face With Nature’s Own Hand Painted

Sonnet 21: So It Is Not With Me As With That Muse

Sonnet 22: My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old

Sonnet 23: As An Unperfect Actor On The Stage

Sonnet 24: Mine Eye Hath Play’d The Painter and Hath Steel’d

Sonnet 25: Let Those Who Are In Favour With Their Stars

Sonnet 26: Lord Of My Love, To Whom In Vassalage

Sonnet 27: Weary With Toil, I Haste To My Bed

Sonnet 28: How Can I Then Return In Happy Plight

Sonnet 29: When In Disgrace With Fortune and Men’s Eyes

Sonnet 30: When To The Sessions Of Sweet Silent Thought

Sonnet 31: Thy Bosom Is Endeared With All Hearts

Sonnet 32: If Thou Survive My Well-Contented Day

Sonnet 33: Full Many A Glorious Morning I Have Seen

Sonnet 34: Why Didst Thou Promise Such A Beauteous Day

Sonnet 35: No More Be Grieved At That Which Thou Hast Done

Sonnet 36: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain

Sonnet 37: As A Decrepit Father Takes Delight

Sonnet 38: How Can My Muse Want Subject To Invent

Sonnet 39: O! How Thy Worth With Manners May I Sing

Sonnet 40: Take All My Loves, My Love, Yea Take Them All

Sonnet 41: Those Pretty Wrongs That Liberty Commits

Sonnet 42: That Thou Hast It Is Not All My Grief

Sonnet 43: When Most I Wink, Then Do Mine Eyes Best See

Sonnet 44: If The Dull Substance Of My Flesh Were Thought

Sonnet 45: That Thou Hast It Is Not All My Grief

Sonnet 46: Mine Eye And Heart Are At A Mortal War

Sonnet 47: Betwixt Mine Eye And Heart A League Is Took

Sonnet 48: How Careful Was I When I Took My Way

Sonnet 49: Against That Time, If Ever That Time Come

Sonnet 50: How Heavy Do I Journey On The Way

Sonnet 51: Thus Can My Love Excuse The Slow Offence

Famous Sonnets By Shakespeare

Shakespeare published 154 sonnets, and although they are all poems of the highest quality, there are some that have entered deeply into the consciousness of our culture to become the most famous Shakespeare sonnets. This handful of sonnets are quoted regularly by people at all levels of modern western life – sometimes without even realizing that they are quoting a line from Shakespeare.

In our humble opinion the 8 sonnets below represent Shakespeare’s most famous words in the sonnet form:

Sonnet 18:Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Perhaps the most famous of all the sonnets is Sonnet 18, where Shakespeare addresses a young man to whom he is very close. It would be impossible to say whether Shakespeare was an arrogant man because we don’t know what he was like. We also don’t know whether he thought he was the ‘great,’ immortal writer that we regard him as today. However, after describing the young man’s great beauty, he suggests that his poetry is ‘eternal’ and ends by stating that as long as there are people who can still read, the sonnet, and therefore the description of the young man’s beauty, will still be there.

Sonnet 30:When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

An interesting take on aging and love. The narrator describes the things that people agonize over as they descend into old age – all the regrets and the pain of reliving the mistakes he has made. It’s full of agony but when he thinks about his beloved all the regrets and pain evaporate.

Sonnet 33:Full many a glorious morning have I seen

This is a poem about loss; the loss of a loved one. Shakespeare approaches it by expressing the contrast in the way we feel when the morning sun is shining brightly and when it’s obscured by clouds, making the world a forlorn place. When he was loved by the beloved it was like the glorious morning, but now, having lost the beloved, it feels like an overcast and gloomy morning. He concludes that he doesn’t condemn the beloved because human frailty, even among the best of humanity, is just as much a part of nature as the obscuring clouds are.

Sonnet 73:That time of year thou mayst in me behold

The narrator of Sonnet 73 is approaching death and thinking about how different it is from being young. It’s like the branch of a tree where birds once sang but the birds have gone and the leaves have fallen, leaving only a few dry yellow leaves. It’s like the twilight of a beautiful day, where there is only the black night ahead. It’s like the glowing ashes of a fire that once roared. The things that one gave him life have destroyed his life. From that experience, he has learned that one has to love life as strongly as one can because it will end all too soon.

Sonnet 104:To me, fair friend, you never can be old

Here Shakespeare expresses the love one person has for another by showing how the beauty of the beloved doesn’t change in the eyes of the lover. He shows time passing through the seasons and the years, everything changing. Except for the beauty of the beloved. He goes further by saying that no matter how long the world will endure, even though the beloved is long dead there will never be another as beautiful.

Sonnet 116:Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments

There are two striking definitions of love that we refer to again and again. Perhaps the most popular of the two is in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (Corinthians 13: 4-8):

Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

Paul’s text is as well known as Sonnet 116 because it is used in most weddings as the young couple stands before the minister. But Shakespeare’s sonnet employs an amazing array of poetic devices to convey the eternal nature of love. Shakespeare ends by staking everything on his observations about love by asserting that if he is wrong about it then no-one ever wrote anything and no-one ever loved.

Sonnet 129:The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Sonnet 129 is an interesting take on the imperative force of lust, but its ultimate shallowness. Everyone knows how shallow and guilt-producing lust is but very few men can avoid it. Shakespeare shows how lust brings out the very worst in people and the extremes they will go to. And then he explains the guilt that follows the satisfaction of one’s lust.

Sonnet 130:My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

Shakespeare is expressing the kind of love that has nothing to do with the beloved’s looks. He satirizes the usual way of expressing love for a woman – praising her lips and her hair, the way she walks, and all the things that a young man may rave about when he thinks about his beloved. What he does is invert those things, assert that his beloved is ugly, ungainly, bad-smelling, etc, but ends by saying that his love for her is as ‘rare’ as that of any young man who writes flatteringly about the object of his love.

Interested in sonnets from other authors? Check out our sonnet examples from highly regarded poets who do things a little differently to Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Publishing Shakespeare’s Sonnets

A widely held belief contends that Shakespeare’s sonnets were published without his consent. Had Shakespeare endorsed their publication, many believe he would have provided their printer with an authoritative text and a dedication. However, “Shakes-peares Sonnets” contains no dedication from the author and the text has many errors. Some critics also maintain that some sonnets are unfinished and that the sequence is too incoherent to have been intended for publication.

Exponents of this view have argued that someone whom Shakespeare trusted betrayed him by giving the poems to their first publisher, Thomas Thope, or that a thief, perhaps motivated by animosity or personal profit, seized the poets manuscript and sold it on. Some hold that the publication of the sonnets surely upset Shakespeare, whose poems dealt with scandalous forms of love; hom*oerotic and adulterous. Others variously insist that these subjects are more shocking to post-Victorian readers than to Jacobean ones; that, whilst the sonnets voice strong feelings, these were entirely appropriate to the form; and that emotions expressed in his sonnets do not mirror Shakespeare’s own any more than those ofdramatic characters in his plays.

Who Were The Shakespeare Sonnets Dedicated To?

Certain features ofthe sonnet form – not least the first-person narrative and themes of love – give the impression of offering direct access to their author’s inner world. Since there has long been intense curiosity about the ‘youth’ addressed in the sonnets, clues to his identity have also been extracted with no little strain from the frontispiece of the first edition. The author of this dedication, T.T, was Thomas Thorpe, the publisher. But the identity of the “begetter” of the sonnets, “Mr W. H.” remains a mystery. Some think this is a misprint for “Mr W. S.” or “Mr W. Sh.”, as in William Shakespeare. Others suspect that the “begetter” refers to the scoundrel who may have conveyed the poems to Thorpe against Shakespeare’s wishes. But the most widely held assumption is that the “beggetter” must be the person who inspired the “ensuing sonnets”, the majority of which address a young man.

Working from the scant evidence offered by the initials W. H., literary detectives have proposed many candidates. One isHenry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicatedVenus and AdonisandThe Rape of Lucrecein the mid-1590s. Another is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whose name figures among those to whom the First Folio was dedicated in 1623. A third candidate is Sir William Hervey, stepfather of the Earl of Southampton, who may have commissioned lyrics urging the young man to marry and produce an heir – the first 17 sonnets of the sequence treat this theme. Of these candidates, however, two were earls and one was a gentleman, referred to as “Sir”. None would have been called “Mr” save by error or to suggest intimacy. In the end, these probing enigmas of Shakespeare’s sonnets are forced to speculate; information is poor, scarce and inconclusive.

The numbers behind the sonnets

Who knew that Shakespeare’s sonnets and mathematics were so linked?

In the super-interesting video below, Professor Roger Bowley talks about the tight constraints – and shape – that numbers gave to Shakespeare’s sonnets.

What’s your take on the Shakespeare sonnets listed above? Let us know by joining in the conversation in the comments section below!

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20 replies

« Older Comments

Oscar says:

January 11, 2020 at 10:14 am

I verry mutch like sonnet154

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Lev says:

February 23, 2021 at 12:17 pm

I proposed a hypothesis revealing the meaning of the mysterious Dedication – see my article `Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Riddle of Dedication` https://vixra.org/abs/2102.0107

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Alina says:

October 28, 2022 at 9:24 am

The sonnets, especially 34, suggest to me that Shakespeare may have been unhappy in his relationships. It makes me sad.

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salil vasant nayak says:

March 28, 2023 at 4:25 pm

nice, thanks, his works are more than meets the eye!

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Tracy M Large says:

September 30, 2023 at 6:49 am

What an impressionable Mark he left throughout his generations still centuries later We’re still learning from him A true composure of his pieces Shows how tangible one’s touch can be on time I have an original William Shakespeare ‘The tragedy of McBeth’ 1673 1908 edition I cherish

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Serenity Wortham says:

October 10, 2023 at 5:02 am

Shakespeare’s collection of 154 sonnets, initially published in 1609 in the ‘quarto’, encapsulates a rich tapestry of themes that reflect the complexities of human emotions and experiences. Central themes that reverberate through these sonnets include the passage of time, mortality, love, beauty, infidelity, and jealousy, inviting readers into a profound exploration of the human condition.
A prominent theme across the sonnets is the passage of time and its inexorable effects on human life. Shakespeare grapples with the fleeting nature of time, expressing the inevitable march towards mortality and the fleeting nature of youth and beauty. He frequently uses imagery related to seasons, days, and hours to underscore the transience of life and the urgency to seize the present moment.
Love, arguably the most pervasive theme in the sonnet sequence, is depicted in various shades – from idealized and romantic to tumultuous and conflicted. The first 126 sonnets, addressed to a young man, explore themes of infatuation, adoration, friendship, and the desire for legacy and immortality through procreation. These sonnets delve into the complexities of platonic and romantic love, capturing the profound emotions experienced by the speaker.
In the latter part of the sequence, the focus shifts to a ‘dark lady,’ an enigmatic woman who is the subject of the remaining 28 sonnets. Here, the sonnets take a more provocative turn, exploring themes of lust, jealousy, betrayal, and the darker aspects of romantic relationships. The portrayal of this ‘dark lady’ offers a contrast to the idealized love depicted in the earlier sonnets and delves into the complexities of human desires and emotions.
Shakespeare’s sonnets remain a timeless exploration of the human psyche, revealing the multifaceted nature of human emotions and experiences. The duality between the idealized love for the young man and the more tumultuous relationships with the ‘dark lady’ provides a holistic depiction of the highs and lows of love and the inevitability of the passage of time and mortality.

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