Shakespeare: Sonnets

The S4N Pocket Poems Series presents classic long poems and books of poetry as they were originally presented, free of interpretation and notes, and in an attractive size that can be carried and read anywhere.

Presented here is the complete text of Shakespeare's Sonnets, first published in 1609. A companion volume containing Shakespeare's other narrative poems is forthcoming.

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Details for much of his early life are scant, although it is assumed that after his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582 and the birth of three children by 1585, he made his way to London to work in the theater. While he began his career as an actor, his abilities as a playwright were soon evident, and by the mid-1590s there was no serious rival to his position as the preeminent playwright and poet of his time. The sonnet sequence that follows was not published until 1609, although many of the poems were probably written ten or fifteen years earlier. As with much concerning Shakespeare, the question of whether (and to what extent) the poems contain autobiographical material that couldn't find expression in his plays, remains a fruitful mystery.