The Fair Youth Sequence

The Fair Youth sequence, made up of Sonnets 1 to 126, are addressed to an exceptionally attractive and virtuous unnamed young man, often referred to as the Fair Youth.

The opening sonnets, from Sonnet 1 to Sonnet 17, are known as the procreation sonnets, in which Shakespeare advises the Fair Youth to marry and have children as a way to preserve his beauty through his offspring.

These connect to the beauty and time themes described above. Sonnets 18 to 77 depict the poet’s deepening admiration for the Fair Youth. This part of the sequence contains one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), which immortalizes the youth’s beauty through poetry.

Sonnets 78 to 96 depict jealousy, betrayal, and disappointment in the relationship between the poet and the youth. Sonnet 87 addresses the disparity between his own worth and the Fair Youth’s, leading the poet to the conclusion of an inevitable separation:

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thy self thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

Sonnets 97-126 depict a reconciliation between the youth and the poet, showing a shift in the poet’s admiration of the youth from passionate to more mature. Sonnets 104 reflects on the poet’s fixed and permanent love of the Fair Youth, suggesting that true beauty transcends time:

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen;
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

The Dark Lady Sequence

The Dark Lady sequence, made up of Sonnets 127 to 154, is addressed to an unknown woman known as the Dark Lady, characterized by her unconventional beauty and moral complexity. These sonnets depict the intense desire, jealousy, and disillusionment of the poet’s relationship with the Dark Lady. Shakespeare introduces the Dark Lady in Sonnet 127, where he suggests that despite her deviation from conventional beauty, the Dark Lady is equally beautiful:

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

Sonnet 129 examines the aforementioned dark side of love with a particular focus on the intense and destructive nature of desire. Shakespeare portrays lust as a powerful force that leads to shame and regret, depicting the paradox of attraction:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Sonnet 133 depicts the poet’s jealousy and pain surrounding the Dark Lady’s infidelity:

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
Is't not enough to torture me alone,
But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engross'd:
Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken;
A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd: Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,
But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail;
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;
Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol:
And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.