Iambic pentameters
Shakespearean sonnets follow an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme.
Paul Edmondson has written: 'Shakespeare's sonnets' -- subject(s): English Sonnets, History and criticism
Shakespeare's Sonnets were first published in 1609, by the London printer Thomas Thorpe. Sonnets 138 and 144 had appeared earlier, in the 1599 anthology The Passionate Pilgrim. The fashion for sonnets lasted from about 1580 until the very early 1600's - and for those twenty years sonnets were as cool and hip as rap is today. So by publishing in 1609, Shakespeare's sonnets had missed the boom years. But there are many references to sonnets written by Shakespeare much earlier than this (and we can see from the subject matter of many of the sonnets that they must have been written long before they were published). So it looks like Shakespeare's sonnets were originally passed round by hand, and only published as an afterthought (after Shakespeare had already become the most famous living playwright).
154 Sonnets of William Shakespeare
Hugh Calvert has written: 'Shakespeare's sonnets and problems of autobiography' -- subject(s): Autobiography, English Sonnets, History and criticism, Self in literature
Gregory Thornton has written: 'Sonnets of Shakespeare's ghost' -- subject(s): Poetry
Katherine Duncan-Jones has written: 'Shakespeare's Sonnets' 'Shakespeare's Sonnets' 'Sir Philip Sidney' -- subject(s): Biography, Court and courtiers, English Poets, Great Britain, Sidney, Philip, Sir, 1554-1586 'Shakespeare' -- subject(s): Mottagande, Influenser, Appreciation, Soziale Stellung, Samtida, Historia, I litteraturen, Prestige, History
David Basch has written: 'The Shakespeare codes : the sonnets deciphered' -- subject(s): Cipher, Criticism and interpretation, English Sonnets, History and criticism, Judaism and literature, Religion
John North has written: 'The rediscovered masterpiece: Shakespeare's Sonnets restored after 350 years of deception' -- subject(s): English Sonnets, History and criticism, Willobie his Avisa
Peter Hyland has written: 'An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems' -- subject(s): Adonis (Greek deity) in literature, English Narrative poetry, English Sonnets, History and criticism, In literature, Narrative poetry, English, Poetic works, Sonnets, English, Venus (Roman deity) in literature 'Shakespeare's heroines' 'Saul Bellow' -- subject(s): Criticism and interpretation
The audience for the original poem which became represented as Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 was probably the young aristocrat who appears to be the addressee of Sonnets 1-17 (and many others of Shakespeare's Sonnets). The main audience for its published replication(s) is that group of persons who love beautiful poetry.There is strong evidence to show that the aristocrat was Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, who was the dedicatee of Shakespeare's two long poems, Venus & Adonis and Lucrece. Read more at the link below to The Biography in Shakepeare's Sonnets.
Gerald Henry Rendall has written: 'Shakespeare sonnets and Edward De Vere' -- subject(s): Authorship, Oxford theory