Who did Shakespeare dedicate his 154 sonnets to?

Answer 1

Here's your answer: "Shakespeare addresses Sonnets 1 through 126 to an unidentified young man with outstanding physical and intellectual attributes. The first 17 of these urge the young man to marry so that he can pass on his superior qualities to a child, thereby allowing future generations to enjoy and appreciate these qualities when the child becomes a man. In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare alters his viewpoint, saying his own poetry may be all that is necessary to immortalize the young man and his qualities.

.......In Sonnets 127 through 154, Shakespeare devotes most of his attention to addressing a mysterious "dark lady"-a sensuous, irresistible woman of questionable morals who captivates the poet. References to the dark lady also appear in previous sonnets (35, 40, 41, 42), in which Shakespeare reproaches the young man for an apparent liaison with the dark lady. The first two lines of Sonnet 41 chide the young man for "those petty wrongs that liberty commits / when I am sometime absent from thy heart," a reference to the young man's wrongful wooing of the dark lady. The last two lines, the rhyming couplet, further impugn the young man for using his good looks to attract the dark lady. In Sonnet 42, the poet charges, "thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her." "
They were dedicated to Mr. W.H., except nobody is really sure who that is. A prime contender is Henry Wriothesley the Earl of Southampton, except of course that he is really Mr. H.W.