Insurgency

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency

A Home Army insurgent next to a propaganda poster during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising

An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare against a larger authority. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irregular forces face a large, well-equipped, regular military force state adversary. Due to this asymmetry, insurgents avoid large-scale direct battles, opting instead to blend in with the civilian population (often in rural areas) where they gradually expand territorial control and military forces. Insurgency frequently hinges on control of and collaboration with local populations.

An insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, as well as other political, economic and social actions of various kinds. Due to the blending of insurgents with the civilian population, insurgencies tend to involve considerable violence against civilians (by the state and the insurgents). State attempts to quell insurgencies frequently lead to the infliction of indiscriminate violence, whereas rebel control of territory frequently involves violence against the civilian population. Insurgency sets itself apart from terrorism by aiming for political control rather than resorting to indiscriminate violence, however, it may incorporate terrorist tactics.

Where a revolt takes the form of armed rebellion, it may not be viewed as an insurgency if a state of belligerency exists between one or more sovereign states and rebel forces. For example, during the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America was not recognized as a sovereign state, but it was recognized as a belligerent power, and thus Confederate warships were given the same rights as United States warships in foreign ports.

Sometimes there may be two or more simultaneous insurgencies (multipolar) occurring in a country. The Iraq insurgency is one example of a recognized government versus multiple groups of insurgents. Other historic insurgencies, such as the Russian Civil War, have been multipolar rather than a straightforward model made up of two sides. During the Angolan Civil War there were two main sides: MPLA and UNITA. At the same time, there was another separatist movement for the independence of the Cabinda region headed up by FLEC. Multipolarity extends the definition of insurgency to situations where there is no recognized authority, as in the Somali Civil War, especially the period from 1998 to 2006, where it broke into quasi-autonomous smaller states, fighting among one another in changing alliances.

Definition

The so-called kuruc were armed anti-Habsburg rebels in Royal Hungary between 1671 and 1711.

James Fearon and David Laitin define insurgency as "a technology of military conflict characterized by small, lightly armed bands practicing guerrilla warfare from rural base areas." Austin Long defines insurgency as "the use of political and military means by irregular forces to change an existing political order. These forces typically mingle with civilians in order to hide from the forces defending the political order." According to Matthew Adam Kocher, Thomas Pepinsky and Stathis Kalyvas, a central objective in insurgencies is to achieve control over civilians. To exercise control armed groups apply a variety of practices, including different types of violence, dispute resolution, taxation, regulation of movement, access to aid and services, and social strictures.

Insurgency and civil wars

According to James D. Fearon, wars have a rationalist explanation behind them, which explains why leaders prefer to gamble in wars and avoid peaceful bargains. Fearon states that intermediate bargains can be a problem because countries cannot easily trade territories with the spread of nationalism. Furthermore, wars can take the form of civil wars. In her article Why Bad Governance Leads to Civil Wars, Barbara F. Walter has presented a theory that explains the role of strong institutions in preventing insurgencies that can result in civil wars. Walter believes that institutions can contribute to four goals.

Institutions are responsible for checking the government, creating multiple peaceful routes to help the government solve problems, making the government committed to political terms that entails preserving peace, and creating an atmosphere where rebels do not need to form militias. Furthermore, Walter adds that if there is a conflict between the government and the insurgents in the form of a civil war, that can bring about a new government that is accountable to a wider range of people, who have to commit to a compromise in political bargains. According to Walter, the presence of strong influential institutions can be beneficial to prevent the repetition of civil wars, but autocratic governments are less likely to accept the emergence of strong institutions because of their resulting constraint of governmental corruption and privileges.

In her book, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in Salvador, Elisabeth Jean Wood explains that participants in high-risk activism are very aware of the costs and benefits of engaging in civil wars. Wood suggests that "participants in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in the US South ran high risks of bodily harm in challenging the long-standing practices of racial exclusion in Mississippi." There are many selective incentives that encourage insurgency and violent movements against autocratic political regimes. For example, the supply of safety as a material good can be provided by the insurgents, which abolishes the exploitation of the government and thus forms one of the main incentives. The revolutionary power can help manifest a social-political network that in return provides access to political opportunities to diverse candidates, who share a collective identity and cultural homogeneity. Also, civil wars and insurgencies can provide employment and access to services and resources that were once taken over by the autocratic regimes.

Tactics

Insurgencies differ in their use of tactics and methods. In a 2004 article, Robert R. Tomes spoke of four elements that "typically encompass an insurgency":

1. cell-networks that maintain secrecy
2. terrorism used to foster insecurity among the population and drive them to the insurgents for protection
3. multifaceted attempts to cultivate support in the general population, often by undermining the new regime
4. attacks against the government

Tomes' is an example of a definition that does not cover all insurgencies. For example, the French Revolution had no cell system, and in the American Revolution, little to no attempt was made to terrorize civilians. In consecutive coups in 1977 and 1999 in Pakistan, the initial actions focused internally on the government rather than on seeking broad support. While Tomes' definition fits well with Mao's Phase I, it does not deal well with larger civil wars. Mao does assume terrorism is usually part of the early phases, but it is not always present in revolutionary insurgency.

Tomes offers an indirect definition of insurgency, drawn from Trinquier's definition of counterinsurgency: "an interlocking system of actions—political, economic, psychological, military—that aims at the [insurgents' intended] overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime."

Steven Metz observes that past models of insurgency do not perfectly fit modern insurgency, in that current instances are far more likely to have a multinational or transnational character than those of the past. Several insurgencies may belong to more complex conflicts, involving "third forces (armed groups which affect the outcome, such as militias) and fourth forces (unarmed groups which affect the outcome, such as international media), who may be distinct from the core insurgents and the recognized government. While overt state sponsorship becomes less common, sponsorship by transnational groups is more common. "The nesting of insurgency within complex conflicts associated with state weakness or failure..." (See the discussion of failed states below.) Metz suggests that contemporary insurgencies have far more complex and shifting participation than traditional wars, where discrete belligerents seek a clear strategic victory.

Terrorism

Main article: Terrorism

Many insurgencies include terrorism. While there is no accepted definition of terrorism in international law, United Nations-sponsored working definitions include one drafted by Alex P. Schmid for the Policy Working Group on the United Nations and Terrorism. Reporting to the Secretary-General in 2002, the Working Group stated the following:

Without attempting a comprehensive definition of terrorism, it would be useful to delineate some broad characteristics of the phenomenon. Terrorism is, in most cases, essentially a political act. It is meant to inflict dramatic and deadly injury on civilians and to create an atmosphere of fear, generally for a political or ideological (whether secular or religious) purpose. Terrorism is a criminal act, but it is more than mere criminality. To overcome the problem of terrorism it is necessary to understand its political nature as well as its basic criminality and psychology. The United Nations needs to address both sides of this equation.

Yet another conflict of definitions involves insurgency versus terrorism. The winning essay of the 24th Annual United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Essay Contest, by Michael F. Morris, said [A pure terrorist group] "may pursue political, even revolutionary, goals, but their violence replaces rather than complements a political program." Morris made the point that the use, or non-use, of terrorism does not define insurgency, "but that organizational traits have traditionally provided another means to tell the two apart. Insurgencies normally field fighting forces orders of magnitude larger than those of terrorist organizations." Insurgencies have a political purpose, and may provide social services and have an overt, even legal, political wing. Their covert wing carries out attacks on military forces with tactics such as raids and ambushes, as well as acts of terror such as attacks that cause deliberate civilian casualties.

Mao considered terrorism a basic part of his first part of the three phases of revolutionary warfare. Several insurgency models recognize that completed acts of terrorism widen the security gap; the Marxist guerrilla theoretician Carlos Marighella specifically recommended acts of terror, as a means of accomplishing something that fits the concept of opening the security gap. Mao considered terrorism to be part of forming a guerrilla movement.

Subversion

Main article: Subversion

While not every insurgency involves terror, most involve an equally hard to define tactic, subversion. "When a country is being subverted it is not being outfought; it is being out-administered. Subversion is literally administration with a minus sign in front." The exceptional cases of insurgency without subversion are those where there is no accepted government that is providing administrative services.

While the term "subversion" is less commonly used by current U.S. spokesmen, that may be due to the hyperbolic way it was used in the past, in a specifically anticommunist context. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk did in April 1962, when he declared that urgent action was required before the "enemy's subversive politico-military teams find fertile spawning grounds for their fish eggs."

In a Western context, Rosenau cites a British Secret Intelligence Service definition as "a generalized intention to (emphasis added) "overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means." While insurgents do not necessarily use terror, it is hard to imagine any insurgency meeting its goals without undermining aspects of the legitimacy or power of the government or faction it opposes. Rosenau mentions a more recent definition that suggests subversion includes measures short of violence, which still serve the purposes of insurgents. Rarely, subversion alone can change a government; this arguably happened in the liberalization of Eastern Europe. To the Communist government of Poland, Solidarity appeared subversive but not violent.

Political rhetoric, myths and models

In arguing against the term Global War on Terror, Francis Fukuyama said the United States was not fighting terrorism generically, as in Chechnya or Palestine. Rather, he said the slogan "war on terror" is directed at "radical Islamism, a movement that makes use of culture for political objectives." He suggested it might be deeper than the ideological conflict of the Cold War, but it should not be confused with Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations." Addressing Huntington's thesis, Fukuyama stressed that the US and its allies need to focus on specific radical groups rather than clash with global Islam.

Fukuyama argued that political means, rather than direct military measures, are the most effective ways to defeat that insurgency. David Kilcullen wrote "We must distinguish Al Qa'eda and the broader militant movements it symbolises – entities that use terrorism – from the tactic of terrorism itself."

There may be utility in examining a war not specifically on the tactic of terror but in co-ordination among multiple national or regional insurgencies. It may be politically infeasible to refer to a conflict as an "insurgency" rather than by some more charged term, but military analysts, when concepts associated with insurgency fit, should not ignore those ideas in their planning. Additionally, the recommendations can be applied to the strategic campaign, even if it is politically unfeasible to use precise terminology. Insurgent groups often struggle to maintain coherency and authority due to their decentralized nature, and thus rely heavily upon ethnic, religious, or ideological bounds to avoid splintering.

While it may be reasonable to consider transnational insurgency, Anthony Cordesman points out some of the myths in trying to have a worldwide view of terror:

• Cooperation can be based on trust and common values: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
• A definition of terrorism exists that can be accepted by all.
• Intelligence can be freely shared.
• Other states can be counted on to keep information secure and use it to mutual advantage.
• International institutions are secure and trustworthy.
• Internal instability and security issues do not require compartmentation and secrecy at national level.
• The "war on terrorism" creates common priorities and needs for action.
• Global and regional cooperation is the natural basis for international action.
• Legal systems are compatible enough for cooperation.
• Human rights and rule of law differences do not limit cooperation.
• Most needs are identical.
• Co-operation can be separated from financial needs and resources.

Social scientists, soldiers, and sources of change have been modeling insurgency for nearly a century if one starts with Mao. Counterinsurgency models, not mutually exclusive from one another, come from Kilcullen, McCormick, Barnett and Eizenstat. Kilcullen describes the "pillars" of a stable society, while Eizenstat addresses the "gaps" that form cracks in societal stability. McCormick's model shows the interplay among the actors: insurgents, government, population and external organizations. Barnett discusses the relationship of the country with the outside world, and Cordesman focuses on the specifics of providing security.

Recent studies have tried to model the conceptual architecture of insurgent warfare using computational and mathematical modelling. A recent study by Juan Camilo Bohorquez, Sean Gourley, Alexander R. Dixon, Michael Spagat, and Neil F. Johnson entitled "Common Ecology Quantifies Human Insurgency", suggests a common structure for 9 contemporary insurgent wars, supported on statistical data of more than 50,000 insurgent attacks. The model explains the recurrent statistical pattern found in the distribution of deaths in insurgent and terrorist events.

Kilcullen's pillars

Kilcullen Figure 1: Ecosystem of Insurgency

Kilcullen's Three Pillars

Kilcullen describes a framework for counterinsurgency. He gives a visual overview of the actors in his model of conflicts, which he represents as a box containing an "ecosystem" defined by geographic, ethnic, economic, social, cultural, and religious characteristics. Inside the box are, among others, governments, counterinsurgent forces, insurgent leaders, insurgent forces, and the general population, which is made up of three groups:

1. those committed to the insurgents;
2. those committed to the counterinsurgents;
3. those who simply wish to get on with their lives.

Often, but not always, states or groups that aid one side or the other are outside the box. Outside-the-box intervention has dynamics of its own.

The counterinsurgency strategy can be described as efforts to end the insurgency by a campaign developed in balance along three "pillars": security, political, and economical.

"Obviously enough, you cannot command what you do not control. Therefore, unity of command (between agencies or among government and non-government actors) means little in this environment." Unity of command is one of the axioms of military doctrine that change with the use of swarming. In Edwards' swarming model, as in Kilcullen's mode, unity of command becomes "unity of effort at best, and collaboration or deconfliction at least."

As in swarming, in Kilcullen's view unity of effort "depends less on a shared command and control hierarchy, and more on a shared diagnosis of the problem (i.e., the distributed knowledge of swarms), platforms for collaboration, information sharing and deconfliction. Each player must understand the others' strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and objectives, and inter-agency teams must be structured for versatility (the ability to perform a wide variety of tasks) and agility (the ability to transition rapidly and smoothly between tasks)."

Eizenstat and closing gaps

Insurgencies, according to Stuart Eizenstat grow out of "gaps". To be viable, a state must be able to close three "gaps", of which the first is most important:

• Security: protection "... against internal and external threats, and preserving sovereignty over territory. If a government cannot ensure security, rebellious armed groups or criminal nonstate actors may use violence to exploit this security gap—as in Haiti, Nepal, and Somalia."
• Capacity: the survival needs of water, electrical power, food and public health, closely followed by education, communications and a working economic system. "An inability to do so creates a capacity gap, which can lead to a loss of public confidence and then perhaps political upheaval. In most environments, a capacity gap coexists with—or even grows out of—a security gap. In Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, segments of the population are cut off from their governments because of endemic insecurity. And in postconflict Iraq, critical capacity gaps exist despite the country's relative wealth and strategic importance."
• Legitimacy: closing the legitimacy gap is more than an incantation of "democracy" and "elections", but a government that is perceived to exist by the consent of the governed, has minimal corruption, and has a working law enforcement and judicial system that enforce human rights.

Note the similarity between Eizenstat's gaps and Kilcullen's three pillars. In the table below, do not assume that a problematic state is unable to assist less developed states while closing its own gaps.

Rough classification of states

State type	Needs	Representative examples
Militarily strong but weak in other institutions	Lower tensions before working on gaps	Cuba, North Korea
Good performers	Continuing development of working institutions. Focused private investment	El Salvador, Ghana, Mongolia, Senegal, Nicaragua, Uganda
Weak states	Close one or two gaps	Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe
Failed states	Close all gaps	Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Liberia, Palestine, Somalia

McCormick Magic Diamond

McCormick's model is designed as a tool for counterinsurgency (COIN), but develops a symmetrical view of the required actions for both the Insurgent and COIN forces to achieve success. In this way the counterinsurgency model can demonstrate how both the insurgent and COIN forces succeed or fail. The model's strategies and principle apply to both forces, therefore the degree the forces follow the model should have a direct correlation to the success or failure of either the Insurgent or COIN force.

McCormick insurgency model

The model depicts four key elements or players:

1. Insurgent force
2. Counterinsurgency force (i.e., the government)
3. Population
4. International community

All of these interact, and the different elements have to assess their best options in a set of actions:

1. Gaining support of the population
2. Disrupt opponent's control over the population
3. Direct action against opponent
4. Disrupt opponent's relations with the international community
5. Establish relationships with the international community

Barnett and connecting to the core

In Thomas Barnett's paradigm, the world is divided into a "connected core" of nations enjoying a high level of communications among their organizations and individuals, and those nations that are disconnected internally and externally. In a reasonably peaceful situation, he describes a "system administrator" force, often multinational, which does what some call "nation-building", but, most importantly, connects the nation to the core and empowers the natives to communicate—that communication can be likened to swarm coordination. If the state is occupied, or in civil war, another paradigm comes into play: the leviathan, a first-world military force that takes down the opposition regular forces. Leviathan is not constituted to fight local insurgencies, but major forces. Leviathan may use extensive swarming at the tactical level, but its dispatch is a strategic decision that may be made unilaterally, or by an established group of the core such as NATO or ASEAN.

Cordesman and security

Other than brief "Leviathan" takedowns, security building appears to need to be regional, with logistical and other technical support from more developed countries and alliances (e.g., ASEAN, NATO). Noncombat military assistance in closing the security gap begins with training, sometimes in specialized areas such as intelligence. More direct, but still noncombat support, includes intelligence, planning, logistics and communications.

Anthony Cordesman notes that security requirements differ by region and state in region. Writing on the Middle East, he identified different security needs for specific areas, as well as the US interest in security in those areas.

• In North Africa, the US focus should be on security cooperation in achieving regional stability and in counterterrorism.
• In the Levant, the US must largely compartment security cooperation with Israel and cooperation with friendly Arab states like Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, but can improve security cooperation with all these states.
• In the Persian Gulf, the US must deal with the strategic importance of a region whose petroleum and growing gas exports fuel key elements of the global economy.

It is well to understand that counterterrorism, as used by Cordesman, does not mean using terrorism against the terrorism, but an entire spectrum of activities, nonviolent and violent, to disrupt an opposing terrorist organization. The French general, Joseph Gallieni, observed, while a colonial administrator in 1898,

A country is not conquered and pacified when a military operation has decimated its inhabitants and made all heads bow in terror; the ferments of revolt will germinate in the mass and the rancours accumulated by the brutal action of force will make them grow again

Both Kilcullen and Eizenstat define a more abstract goal than does Cordesman. Kilcullen's security pillar is roughly equivalent to Eizenstat's security gap:

• Military security (securing the population from attack or intimidation by guerrillas, bandits, terrorists or other armed groups)
• Police security (community policing, police intelligence or "Special Branch" activities, and paramilitary police field forces).
• Human security, building a framework of human rights, civil institutions and individual protections, public safety (fire, ambulance, sanitation, civil defense) and population security.

This pillar most engages military commanders' attention, but of course military means are applied across the model, not just in the security domain, while civilian activity is critically important in the security pillar also ... all three pillars must develop in parallel and stay in balance, while being firmly based in an effective information campaign.

Anthony Cordesman, while speaking of the specific situation in Iraq, makes some points that can be generalized to other nations in turmoil. Cordesman recognizes some value in the groupings in Samuel P. Huntington's idea of the clash of civilizations, but, rather assuming the civilizations must clash, these civilizations simply can be recognized as actors in a multinational world. In the case of Iraq, Cordesman observes that the burden is on the Islamic civilization, not unilaterally the West, if for no other reason that the civilization to which the problematic nation belongs will have cultural and linguistic context that Western civilization cannot hope to equal.

The heart of strengthening weak nations must come from within, and that heart will fail if they deny that the real issue is the future of their civilization, if they tolerate religious, cultural or separatist violence and terrorism when it strikes at unpopular targets, or if they continue to try to export the blame for their own failures to other nations, religions, and cultures.

Asymmetric and irregular conflicts

Asymmetric conflicts (or irregular conflicts), as the emerging type of insurgencies in recent history, is described by Berman and Matanock in their review as conflicts where "the government forces have a clear advantage over rebels in coercive capacity." In this kind of conflicts, rebel groups can reintegrate into the civilian population after an attack if the civilians are willing to silently accept them. Some of the most recent examples include the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the European countries intervenes in the conflicts, creating asymmetry between the government forces and rebels, asymmetric conflict is the most common form of subnational conflicts and the most civil conflicts where the western countries are likely to be involved. Such interventions and their impacts can be seen in the NATO operation in Libya in 2011 and the French-led intervention in Mali in 2013.

Berman and Matanock suggested an information-centric framework to describe asymmetric conflicts on a local level. Three parties are involved in framework: government forces, rebels and civilians. Government forces and rebels attack each other and may inadvertently harm civilians whereas civilians can anonymously share local information with government forces, which would allow government forces to effectively use their asymmetric advantage to target rebels. Taking the role of civilians in this framework into consideration, the government and rebels will divert resources to provide services to civilians so as to influence their decision about sharing information with the government.

The framework is based on several assumptions:

• The consequential action of civilians is information sharing.
• Information can be shared anonymously without endangering the civilians who do so and civilians are assumed to respond to incentives.
• Neither side of government forces and rebels will actively target civilians with coercion or intimidation.

This framework leads to five major implications for counterinsurgency strategies:

1. The government and rebels have an incentive to provide services to civilians, which increases with the value of the information shared.
2. Rebel violence may be reduced by service provision from the government.
   • Projects that address the needs of the civilians in the local communities and conditioned on information sharing by the community are more effective in reducing rebel violence. In practice, these may be smaller projects that are developed through consultation with local communities, which are also more easily revoked when information is not shared.
   • Innovations that increase the value of projects to local civilians, such as including development professionals in project design and implementation, will enhance the effect of violence-reducing.
3. Security provided by the government and service provision (i.e. development spending) are complementary activities.
4. If either side of the government forces or rebels causes casualties among civilians, civilians will reduce their support for that side.
5. Innovations that make anonymous tips to the government easier, of which are often technical, can reduce rebel violence.

These implications are tested by empirical evidences from conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and several other subnational conflicts. Further research on governance, rule of law, attitudes, dynamics and agency between allies are needed to better understand asymmetric conflicts and to have better informed decisions made at the tactical, strategic and public policy levels.

Counter-insurgency

See also: Counterinsurgency and Foreign internal defense

Nigerian Army counterinsurgency forces demonstrating tactics used against Boko Haram, 2016

Before one counters an insurgency, one must understand what one is countering. Typically the most successful counter-insurgencies have been the British in the Malay Emergency and the Filipino government's countering of the Huk Rebellion. In the Philippine–American War, U.S. forces successfully quelled the Filipino insurgents by 1902, albeit with tactics considered unacceptable by the majority of modern populations.

Shakespeare's sonnets

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_sonnets

 

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Thorpe edition of the sonnets (1609)
Author	William Shakespeare
Language	Early Modern English
Genre	Renaissance poetry
Publisher	Thomas Thorpe
Publication date	1609
Publication place	England
Text	Shakespeare's Sonnets at Wikisource

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609. However, there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost. There is also a partial sonnet found in the play Edward III.

Context

Shakespeare's sonnets are considered a continuation of the sonnet tradition that swept through the Renaissance from Petrarch in 14th-century Italy and was finally introduced in 16th-century England by Thomas Wyatt and was given its rhyming metre and division into quatrains by Henry Howard. With few exceptions, Shakespeare's sonnets observe the stylistic form of the English sonnet—the rhyme scheme, the 14 lines, and the metre. But, Shakespeare's sonnets introduce significant departures of content.

Instead of expressing worshipful love for an almost goddess-like yet unobtainable female love-object, as Petrarch, Dante, and Philip Sidney had done, Shakespeare introduces a young man. He also introduces the Dark Lady. Shakespeare explores themes such as lust, homoeroticism, misogyny, infidelity, and acrimony.

The quarto of 1609

The primary source of Shakespeare's sonnets is a quarto published in 1609 titled Shake-speare's Sonnets. It contains 154 sonnets, which are followed by the long poem "A Lover's Complaint". Thirteen copies of the quarto have survived in fairly good shape. There is evidence in a note on the title page of one of the extant copies that the great Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn bought a copy in June 1609 for one shilling.

The sonnets cover such themes as the passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty and mortality. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; the last 28 are either addressed to, or refer to, a woman. (Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim.)

The title of the quarto, Shake-speare's Sonnets, is consistent with the entry in the Stationers' Register. The title appears in upper case lettering on the title page, where it is followed by the phrase "Neuer before Imprinted". The title also appears every time the quarto is opened. That the author's name in a possessive form is part of the title sets it apart from all other sonnet collections of the time, except for one—Sir Philip Sidney's posthumous 1591 publication that is titled, Syr. P.S. his Astrophel and Stella, which is considered one of Shakespeare's most important models. Sidney's title may have inspired Shakespeare, particularly if the "W.H." of Shakespeare's dedication is Sidney's nephew and heir, William Herbert. The idea that the persona referred to as the speaker of Shakespeare's sonnets might be Shakespeare himself, is aggressively repudiated by scholars; however, the title of the quarto does seem to encourage that kind of speculation.

The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are addressed to the young man—urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it to the next generation. Other sonnets express the speaker's love for the young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress; and pun on the poet's name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to the "little love-god" Cupid.

The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers' Register on 20 May 1609:

Tho. Thorpe. Entred for his copie under the handes of master Wilson and master Lownes Wardenes a booke called Shakespeares sonnettes vjd.

Whether Thorpe used an authorised manuscript from Shakespeare or an unauthorised copy is unknown. George Eld printed the quarto, and the run was divided between the booksellers William Aspley and John Wright.

Dedication

Dedication page from The Sonnets

Shakespeare's Sonnets include a dedication to "Mr. W.H.":

TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H.   ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.

T.T.

The upper case letters and the stops that follow each word of the dedication were probably intended to resemble an ancient Roman lapidary inscription or monumental brass, perhaps accentuating the declaration in Sonnet 55 that the work would confer immortality to the subjects of the work:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this pow'rful rhyme

The initials "T.T." are taken to refer to the publisher, Thomas Thorpe. Thorpe usually signed prefatory matter only if the author was out of the country or dead, which suggests that Shakespeare was not in London during the last stage of printing. However, Thorpe's entire corpus of such consists of only four dedications and three prefaces. It has been suggested that Thorpe signing the dedication, rather than the author, might indicate that Thorpe published the work without obtaining Shakespeare's permission. Though Thorpe's taking on the dedication may be explained by the great demands of business and travel that Shakespeare was facing at this time, which may have caused him to deal with the printing production in haste before rushing out of town. After all, May 1609 was an extraordinary time: That month saw a serious outbreak of the plague, which shut down the theatres, and also caused many to flee London. Plus Shakespeare's theatre company was on tour from Ipswich to Oxford. In addition, Shakespeare had been away from Stratford and in the same month, May, was being called on to tend to family and business there, and deal with the litigation of a lawsuit in Warwickshire that involved a substantial amount of money.

Mr. W. H., the dedicatee

The identity of Mr. W.H., "the only begetter of Shakespeare's Sonnets", is not known for certain. His identity has been the subject of a great amount of speculation: That he was the author's patron, that he was both patron and the "faire youth" who is addressed in the sonnets, that the "faire youth" is based on Mr. W.H. in some sonnets but not others, and a number of other ideas.

William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton

William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, is seen as perhaps the most likely identity of Mr. W.H. and the "young man". He was the dedicatee of the First Folio. Thorpe would have been unlikely to have addressed a lord as "Mr", but there may be an explanation, perhaps that form of address came from the author, who wanted to refer to Herbert at an earlier time—when Herbert was a "younger man". There is a later dedication to Herbert in another quarto of verse, Ben Jonson's Epigrammes (1616), in which the text of Jonson's dedication begins, "MY LORD, While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title … " Jonson's emphasis on Pembroke's title, and his comment, seem to be chiding someone else who had the audacity to use the wrong title, as perhaps is the case in Shakespeare's dedication.

Henry Wriothesley (the Earl of Southampton), with initials reversed, has received a great deal of consideration as a likely possibility. He was the dedicatee of Shakespeare's poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Southampton was also known for his good looks.

Other suggestions include:

• A simple printing error for Shakespeare's initials, "W.S." or "W. Sh". This was suggested by Bertrand Russell, Jonathan Bate, and Donald W. Foster.
• William Hall, a printer who had worked with Thorpe. It is noted that "ALL" following "MR. W. H." spells "MR. W. HALL". Using his initials W.H., Hall had edited a collection of the poems of Robert Southwell that was printed by George Eld, the printer of the 1609 Sonnets.
• Sir William Harvey, Southampton's stepfather.
• William Haughton, a contemporary dramatist.
• William Hart, Shakespeare's nephew and male heir.
• Who He. It has been argued that the dedication is deliberately ambiguous, possibly standing for "Who He", a conceit also used in a contemporary pamphlet. It might have been created by Thorpe to encourage speculation and discussion (and hence, sales).
• Willie Hughes. The 18th-century scholar Thomas Tyrwhitt proposed "William Hughes", based on puns on the name in the sonnets (notably Sonnet 20). This idea is expressed in Oscar Wilde's short story "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", and that the sonnets were written to a young actor who played female roles in Shakespeare's plays.

Form and structure of the sonnets

Sonnet 30 as a wall poem in Leiden

The sonnets are almost all constructed using three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a final couplet. The sonnets are composed in iambic pentameter, the metre used in Shakespeare's plays.

The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets, or English sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets. Often, at the end of the third quatrain occurs the volta ("turn"), where the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a turn of thought.

The exceptions are sonnets 99, 126, and 145. Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126 consists of six couplets, and two blank lines marked with italic brackets; 145 is in iambic tetrameters, not pentameters. In one other variation on the standard structure, found for example in sonnet 29, the rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the second (B) rhyme of quatrain one as the second (F) rhyme of quatrain three.

Apart from rhyme, and considering only the arrangement of ideas, and the placement of the volta, a number of sonnets maintain the two-part organization of the Italian sonnet. In that case the term "octave" and "sestet" are commonly used to refer to the sonnet's first eight lines followed by the remaining six lines. There are other line-groupings as well, as Shakespeare finds inventive ways with the content of the fourteen-line poems.

Characters of the sonnets

When analysed as characters, the subjects of the sonnets are usually referred to as the Fair Youth, the Rival Poet, and the Dark Lady. The speaker expresses admiration for the Fair Youth's beauty, and—if reading the sonnets in chronological order as published—later has an affair with the Dark Lady, then so does the Fair Youth. Current linguistic analysis and historical evidence suggests, however, that the sonnets to the Dark Lady were composed first (around 1591–95), the procreation sonnets next, and the later sonnets to the Fair Youth last (1597–1603). It is not known whether the poems and their characters are fiction or autobiographical; scholars who find the sonnets to be autobiographical have attempted to identify the characters with historical individuals.

Fair Youth

The "Fair Youth" is the unnamed young man addressed by the devoted poet in the greatest sequence of the sonnets (1–126). The young man is handsome, self-centred, universally admired and much sought after. The sequence begins with the poet urging the young man to marry and father children (sonnets 1–17). It continues with the friendship developing with the poet's loving admiration, which at times is homoerotic in nature. Then comes a set of betrayals by the young man, as he is seduced by the Dark Lady, and they maintain a liaison (sonnets 133, 134 & 144), all of which the poet struggles to abide. It concludes with the poet's own act of betrayal, resulting in his independence from the fair youth (sonnet 152).

The identity of the Fair Youth has been the subject of speculation among scholars. One popular theory is that he was Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton; this is based in part on the idea that his physical features, age, and personality might fairly match the young man in the sonnets. He was both an admirer and patron of Shakespeare and was considered one of the most prominent nobles of the period. It is also noted that Shakespeare's 1593 poem Venus and Adonis is dedicated to Southampton and, in that poem a young man, Adonis, is encouraged by the goddess of love, Venus, to beget a child, which is a theme in the sonnets. Here are the verses from Venus and Adonis:

Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,

Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,

Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;

Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse,

 Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;

 Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty.

Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed,

Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?

By law of nature thou art bound to breed,

That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;

 And so in spite of death thou dost survive,

 In that thy likeness still is left alive.

Venus and Adonis

A problem with identifying the fair youth with Southampton is that the most certainly datable events referred to in the Sonnets are the fall of Essex and then the gunpowder plotters' executions in 1606, which puts Southampton at the age of 33, and then 39 when the sonnets were published, when he would be past the age when he would be referred to as a "lovely boy" or "fair youth".

Authors such as Thomas Tyrwhitt and Oscar Wilde proposed that the Fair Youth was William Hughes, a seductive young actor who played female roles in Shakespeare's plays. Particularly, Wilde claimed that he was the Mr. W.H. referred to in the dedication attached to the manuscript of the Sonnets.

The Dark Lady

Main article: Dark Lady (Shakespeare)

The Dark Lady sequence (sonnets 127–152) is the most defiant of the sonnet tradition. The sequence distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence with its overt sexuality (Sonnet 151). The Dark Lady is so called because she has black hair and "dun" skin. The Dark Lady suddenly appears (Sonnet 127), and she and the speaker of the sonnets, the poet, are in a sexual relationship. She is not aristocratic, young, beautiful, intelligent or chaste. Her complexion is muddy, her breath "reeks", and she is ungainly when she walks. The relationship strongly parallels Touchstone's pursuit of Audrey in As You Like It. The Dark Lady presents an adequate receptor for male desire. She is celebrated in cocky terms that would be offensive to her, not that she would be able to read or understand what is said. Soon the speaker rebukes her for enslaving his fair friend (sonnet 133). He can't abide the triangular relationship, and it ends with him rejecting her. As with the Fair Youth, there have been many attempts to identify her with a real historical individual. Lucy Negro, Mary Fitton, Emilia Lanier, Elizabeth Wriothesley, and others have been suggested.

The Rival Poet

Main article: Rival Poet

The Rival Poet's identity remains a mystery. If Shakespeare's patron and friend was Pembroke, Shakespeare was not the only poet who praised his beauty; Francis Davison did in a sonnet that is the preface to Davison's quarto A Poetical Rhapsody (1608), which was published just before Shakespeare's Sonnets. John Davies of Hereford, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson are also candidates that find support among clues in the sonnets.

It may be that the Rival Poet is a composite of several poets through which Shakespeare explores his sense of being threatened by competing poets. The speaker sees the Rival Poet as competition for fame and patronage. The sonnets most commonly identified as the Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth sequence in sonnets 78–86.

"A Lover's Complaint"

"A Lover's Complaint" is part two of the quarto published in 1609. It is not written in the sonnet form, but is composed of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal. It is an example of a normal feature of the two-part poetic form, in which the first part expresses the male point of view, and the second part contrasts or complements the first part with the female's point of view. The first part of the quarto, the 154 sonnets, considers frustrated male desire, and the second part, "A Lover's Complaint", expresses the misery of a woman victimized by male desire. The earliest Elizabethan example of this two-part structure is Samuel Daniel's Delia ... with the Complaint of Rosamund (1592)—a sonnet sequence that tells the story of a woman being threatened by a man of higher rank, followed by the woman's complaint. This was imitated by other poets, including Shakespeare with his Rape of Lucrece, the last lines of which contain Lucrece's complaint. Other examples are found in the works of Michael Drayton, Thomas Lodge, Richard Barnfield, and others.

The young man of the sonnets and the young man of "A Lover's Complaint" provide a thematic link between the two parts. In each part the young man is handsome, wealthy and promiscuous, unreliable and admired by all.

Like the sonnets, "A Lover's Complaint" also has a possessive form in its title, which is followed by its own assertion of the author's name. This time the possessive word, "Lover's", refers to a woman, who becomes the primary "speaker" of the work.

Story of "A Lover's Complaint"

"A Lover's Complaint" begins with a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up letters, rings, and other tokens of love. An old man nearby approaches her and asks the reason for her sorrow. She responds by telling him of a former lover who pursued, seduced, and finally abandoned her. She recounts in detail the speech her lover gave to her which seduced her. She concludes her story by conceding that she would fall for the young man's false charms again.

Dates

• 1597 – Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet is published. The spoken prologue to the play, and the prologue to Act II are both written in sonnet form, and the first meeting of the star-crossed lovers is written as a sonnet woven into the dialogue.
• 1598 – Love's Labour's Lost is published as a quarto; the play's title page suggests it is a revision of an earlier version. The comedy features the King of Navarre and his lords who express their love in sonnet form for the Queen of France and her ladies. This play is believed to have been performed at the Inns of Court for Queen Elizabeth I in the mid-1590s.
• 1598 – Francis Meres published his quarto Palladis Tamia, which was entered on the Stationers' Register on 7 September that year. In it he mentions that sonnets by Shakespeare were being circulated privately:

As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c.

• 1599 – William Jaggard published an octavo volume called The Passionate Pilgrime. By W. Shakespeare. It is an anthology of 20 poems. This small publication contained some spurious content falsely ascribed to Shakespeare; it also contained four sonnets that can be said to be by Shakespeare: Two of the four appear to be early versions of sonnets that were later published in the 1609 quarto (numbers 138 and 144); the other two were sonnets lifted from Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Lost. Sonnets 138 and 144 are anything but the sweet sonnets hinted at by Francis Meres' comment. They are instead harshly frank, ironic and recriminative regarding the relationship of the speaker and the Dark Lady. The two sonnets that were taken from Love's Labour's Lost, were, in the context of the play, written by comic characters who were intended to be seen as amateur sonneteers. Jaggard's piracy sold well—a second printing was quickly ordered—but it, including poetry falsely ascribed to Shakespeare, must have been a disappointment to Shakespeare's readers.
• January 1600 – an entry in the Stationers' Register is for a work that will include "certain other sonnets by W.S." This may suggest that Shakespeare planned to respond right away and correct the impression left by Jaggard's book with Shakespeare's own publication, or the entry may have been merely a "staying entry" not regarding an upcoming publication, but intended to prevent Jaggard from publishing any more sonnets by Shakespeare.
• 14 August 1600 – Shakespeare's play The Chronicle History of Henry the fifth is entered into the Register of the Stationers' Company. The spoken epilogue is written in the form of a sonnet.
• 20 May 1609 – The entry in the Stationers' Register announces Shakespeare's Sonnets. The contents include a collection of 154 sonnets followed by the poem "A Lover's Complaint". This publication was greeted with near silence in the documentary record, especially when compared with the lively reception that followed the publication of Venus and Adonis.
• 1612 – Jaggard issues an expanded edition of his piratical anthology, The Passionate Pilgrim, which had been published in 1599. Thomas Heywood protests this piracy in his Apology for Actors (1612), writing that Shakespeare was "much offended" with Jaggard for making "so bold with his name." Jaggard withdraws the attribution to Shakespeare from unsold copies of the 1612 edition.
• 1640 – The publisher John Benson publishes an anthology of poems; some are by Shakespeare, and about 30 are not, but all are ascribed to Shakespeare. It is titled "Poems: Written by Wil. Shakespeare Gent". Benson is even more wildly piratical than Jaggard. Benson draws on The Passionate Pilgrim and other sources, including Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), which he rewrites and rearranges. Benson imperfectly rewrites the sonnets to make them appear to be addressing a woman—the pronoun "he" is often replaced by "she". This edition is unfortunately influential and resulted in confusing and confounding various critical understanding and response for more than a century. Deliberate misgendering is also a feature of 17th-century commonplace books which include Sonnet 2, the most popular sonnet to appear in such collections. In Margaret Bellasys' commonplace book the poem appears with the non-gendered title, 'Spes Altera'. In IA's commonplace book, the gender of the addressee is explicitly changed with the title, 'To one that would die a mayd'.
• 1780 – Edmond Malone, in his two volume supplement to the 1778 Johnson-Stevens edition of the plays, finally instates the 1609 quarto edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets as the sole authoritative text.
• 1986 – The New Penguin Shakespeare’s edition of the sonnets restores "A Lover's Complaint" as an integral part of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Criticism

In his plays, Shakespeare himself seemed to be a satiric critic of sonnets—the allusions to them are often scornful. Then he went on to create one of the longest sonnet-sequences of his era, a sequence that took some sharp turns away from the tradition.

He may have been inspired out of literary ambition, and a desire to carve new paths apart from the well-worn tradition. Or he may have been inspired by biographical elements in his life. It is thought that the biographical aspects have been over-explored and over-speculated on, especially in the face of a paucity of evidence. The critical focus has turned instead (through New Criticism and by scholars such as Stephen Booth and Helen Vendler) to the text itself, which is studied and appreciated linguistically as a "highly complex structure of language and ideas".

Besides the biographic and the linguistic approaches, another way of considering Shakespeare's sonnets is in the context of the culture and literature that surrounds them.

Gerald Hammond, in his book The Reader and the Young Man Sonnets, suggests that the non-expert reader, who is thoughtful and engaged, does not need that much help in understanding the sonnets: though, he states, the reader may often feel mystified when trying to decide, for example, if a word or passage has a concrete meaning or an abstract meaning; laying that kind of perplexity in the reader's path for the reader to deal with is an essential part of reading the sonnets—the reader doesn't always benefit from having knots untangled and double-meanings simplified by the experts, according to Hammond.

During the eighteenth century, The Sonnets' reputation in England was relatively low; in 1805, The Critical Review credited John Milton with the perfection of the English sonnet. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Shakespeare and Milton seemed to be on an equal footing, but critics, burdened by an over-emphasis on biographical explorations, continued to contend with each other for decades on this point.

Editions

Like all Shakespeare's works, Shakespeare's Sonnets have been reprinted many times. Prominent editions include:

First edition and facsimile

• Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
• Lee, Sidney, ed. (1905). Shakespeares Sonnets: Being a reproduction in facsimile of the first edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 458829162.

Variorum editions

• Alden, Raymond Macdonald, ed. (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. OCLC 234756.
• Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. OCLC 6028485. — Volume I and Volume II at the Internet Archive

Modern critical editions

• Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-4163-7. OCLC 86090499.
• Booth, Stephen, ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene. ISBN 0-300-01959-9. OCLC 2968040.
• Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192819338. OCLC 48532938.
• Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Arden Shakespeare, third series (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC 755065951. — 1st edition at the Internet Archive
• Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521294034. OCLC 32272082.
• Kerrigan, John, ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-070732-8. OCLC 15018446.
• Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN 978-0743273282. OCLC 64594469.
• Orgel, Stephen, ed. (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140714531. OCLC 46683809.
• Vendler, Helen, ed. (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-63712-7. OCLC 36806589.

Zinman, Ira, ed. (2009). Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Bible. foreword by HRH Charles Prince of Wales. Bloomington. World Wisdom. ISBN 978-1933316758

Sonnets that occur in the plays

There are sonnets written by Shakespeare that occur in his plays, and these include his earliest sonnets. 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.

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. In Love's Labour's Lost, sonnets are portrayed as evidence that love can render men weak and foolish. In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick each write a sonnet, which serves as proof that they have fallen in love. 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." In Henry V, the Dauphin suggests he will compose a sonnet to his horse.

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.

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…"), 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). 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…")

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…"). 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.

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".

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. Scholars who have supported this attribution include Jonathan Bate, Edward Capell, Eliot Slater, Eric Sams, Giorgio Melchiori, 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. 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. At the time Edward III was published, Shakespeare's sonnets were known by some, but they had not yet been published.

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.