There are sonnets written by Shakespeare that occur in his plays, and these include his earliest sonnets.[61] They differ from the 154 sonnets published in the 1609, because they may lack the deep introspection, for example, and they are written to serve the needs of a performance, exposition or narrative.[62]
Early comedies
In Shakespeare's early comedies, the sonnets and sonnet-making of his characters are often objects of satire. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, sonnet-writing is portrayed cynically as a seduction technique.[63] In Love's Labour's Lost, sonnets are portrayed as evidence that love can render men weak and foolish.[64] In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick each write a sonnet, which serves as proof that they have fallen in love.[65] In All’s Well that Ends Well, a partial sonnet is read, and Bertram comments, "He shall be whipp'd through the army with this rhyme in's forehead."[66] In Henry V, the Dauphin suggests he will compose a sonnet to his horse.[67]
The sonnets that Shakespeare satirizes in his plays are sonnets written in the tradition of Petrarch and Sidney, whereas Shakespeare's sonnets published in the quarto of 1609 take a radical turn away from that older style, and have none of the lovelorn qualities that are mocked in the plays. The sonnets published in 1609 seem to be rebelling against the tradition.[2]: 44–45
In the play Love's Labour's Lost, the King and his three lords have all vowed to live like monks, to study, to give up worldly things, and to see no women. All of them break the last part of the vow by falling in love. The lord Longaville expresses his love in a sonnet ("Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye…"),[68] and the lord Berowne does, too—a hexameter sonnet ("If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?")–a form Sidney uses in six of the sonnets in Astrophel and Stella (Numbers 1, 6, 8, 76, and 102).[69][70] These sonnets contain comic imperfections, including awkward phrasing, and problems with the meter. After Berowne is caught breaking his vow, and exposed by the sonnet he composed, he passionately renounces speech that is affected, and vows to prefer plain country speech. Ironically, when proclaiming this he demonstrates that he can't seem to avoid rich courtly language, and his speech happens to fall into the meter and rhyme of a sonnet. ("O, never will I trust to speeches penned…")[71][72]
Henry V
The epilogue at the end of the play Henry V is written in the form of a sonnet ("Thus far with rough, and all-unable pen…").[73] Formal epilogues were established as a theatrical tradition, and occur in 13 of Shakespeare's plays. In Henry V, the character of Chorus, who has addressed the audience a few times during the play, speaks the wide-ranging epilogue/sonnet. It begins by allowing that the play may not have presented the story in its full glory. It points out that the next king would be Henry VI, who was an infant when he succeeded Henry V, and who "lost France, and made his England bleed/ Which oft our stage hath shown." It refers to the three parts of Henry VI and to Richard III — connecting the Lancastrian and the Yorkist cycles.[74]
Romeo and Juliet
Three sonnets are found in Romeo and Juliet: The prologue to the play ("Two households, both alike in dignity…"), the prologue to the second act ("Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie…"), and set in the form of dialogue at the moment when Romeo and Juliet meet:
ROMEO If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. ROMEO Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.[75]
Much Ado About Nothing
Two sonnets are mentioned in Much Ado About Nothing—sonnets by Beatrice and Benedick—and though not committed to paper, they were in Shakespeare's mind. The first one, revealed by Claudio, is described as "A halting sonnet of his own pure brain/Fashion'd to Beatrice". The second, found by Hero, was "Writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket/Containing her affection unto Benedick".[76]
Edward III
The play Edward III has recently become accepted as part of Shakespeare's canon of plays. It was considered an anonymous work, and that is how it was first published, but in the late 1990s it began to be included in publications of the complete works as co-authored by Shakespeare.[77] Scholars who have supported this attribution include Jonathan Bate, Edward Capell, Eliot Slater,[78] Eric Sams,[79] Giorgio Melchiori,[80] Brian Vickers, and others. The play, printed in 1596, contains language and themes that also appear in Shakespeare's sonnets, including the line: "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds", which occurs in sonnet 94 and the phrase "scarlet ornaments", which occurs in sonnet 142.[81] The scene of the play that contains those quotations is a comic scene that features a poet attempting to compose a love poem at the behest of his king, Edward III.[82] At the time Edward III was published, Shakespeare's sonnets were known by some, but they had not yet been published.[79]
The king, Edward III, has fallen in love with the Countess of Salisbury, and he tells Lodowick, his secretary, to fetch ink and paper. Edward wants Lodowick's help in composing a poem that will sing the praises of the countess. Lodowick has a question:
LODOWICK Write I to a woman? KING EDWARD What beauty else could triumph over me, Or who but women do our love lays greet? What, thinkest thou I did bid thee praise a horse?
The king then expresses and dictates his passion in exuberant poetry, and asks Lodowick to read back to him what he has been able to write down. Lodowick reads:
LODOWICK. 'More fair and chaste'— KING EDWARD. I did not bid thee talk of chastity ...
When the countess enters, the poetry-writing scene is interrupted without Lodowick having accomplished much poetry—only two lines:
More fair and chaste than is the queen of shades, More bold in constance ... Than Judith was.[81]
