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- Modern scholarship divides the sonnets into two main groups: the fair lord sonnets (1-126) and the dark lady sonnets (127-154). Do you agree with this division? Can you find any subdivisions within these divisions? You may wish to focus on the fair lord sonnets, as they offer more room for creativity.
- Choose one of the three recurring characters in the sonnets - the fair lord, the rival poet, or the dark lady - and argue the case for his or her real-world identity. Adopt a candidate who has already been proposed, assessing the evidence for yourself - or posit a new possibility.
- Discuss the conflict between Platonic love and carnal lust captured in the figures of the fair lord and the dark lady, respectively. How does the poet express his love for the fair lord differently from how he expresses his love for the dark lady?
- The rival poet enters the scene to stir things up with the narrator's fair lord. How would you characterize the poet's reaction to the thought of losing his fair lord to another? Is it one of jealousy, disdain, greed, or helplessness?
- Critics are divided over whether Shakespeare's sonnets really do contain expressions of homoerotic desire. What do you think? Is the narrator's love for the fair lord purely one of friendship, or is it in fact something else?
- Many times throughout the sonnets, the poet criticizes himself for his inadequacy. Find at least three examples of such self-criticism, and interrelate them in the context of the sonnets as a whole.
- Discuss the theme of unfaithfulness in Shakespeare's sonnets. Who is being unfaithful to whom? How would you characterize the narrator's reaction to his learning of his loves' unfaithfulness?
- Several of the sonnets are rife with financial imagery. Find as many examples of this imagery as you can, and try to account for their distribution within the sonnets. What does the poet wish to achieve by describing the sonnets' characters and events with the language of money and finance?
- The color black is used frequently in the dark lady sonnets to characterize the woman's dark identity. What other instances of color symbolism appear in the sonnets? Find at least three examples of color symbolism and explain them.
- Sonnets 153 and 154 are often said not to fit in with the overall sequence. It has also been suggested that they are in fact two drafts of the same sonnet due to their similarity in content and form. Do you agree with these statements? Support your hypothesis by attempting to explain why Shakespeare may have written these sonnets in the first place.
ClassicNote on Shakespeare's Sonnets
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