Who does shakespeare address his sonnets to?

Answer 1

The dedication to "Mr. W.H." in the published version of the sonnets was not signed by Shakespeare, but by Thomas Thorpe (T.T.) which some people have taken as an indication that the edition was published without Shakespeare's knowledge or consent. Thus the Mr. W.H. thing probably was not Shakespeare's dedication anyway. What is more, there are a plethora of theories about who this W.H. person might have been, many of which are more plausible than the Wriothesley theory which suffers from the fact that his initials were not W.H. and he was a titled person and therefore would never in a million years be addressed as "Mr." In any case, this confusing dedication has nothing to do with the unidentified people to whom the sonnets were actually addressed, identified strictly through internal evidence as the "Fair Youth" and "Dark Lady". There is plenty of wild speculation over who those people might have been as well.

He dedicated his sonnets to Mr. W.H (full name is Henry Wriothesley)

there are 2 main sequences of the sonnets:

sonnets 1-126 that are addressed to a younger man (and this sequence is called

the Fair Youth sequence)

sonnets 127- 153 are different and more sexual and talk about women

(this sequence is called the Dark Lady sequence)

Answer 2

The dedication to "Mr. W.H." in the published version of the sonnets was not signed by Shakespeare, but by Thomas Thorpe (T.T.) which some people have taken as an indication that the edition was published without Shakespeare's knowledge or consent. Thus the Mr. W.H. thing probably was not Shakespeare's dedication anyway. What is more, there are a plethora of theories about who this W.H. person might have been, many of which are more plausible than the Wriothesley theory which suffers from the fact that his initials were not W.H. and he was a titled person and therefore would never in a million years be addressed as "Mr." In any case, this confusing dedication has nothing to do with the unidentified people to whom the sonnets were actually addressed, identified strictly through internal evidence as the "Fair Youth" and "Dark Lady". There is plenty of wild speculation over who those people might have been as well.

Answer 3

He dedicated his sonnets to Mr. W.H (full name is Henry Wriothesley)

there are 2 main sequences of the sonnets:

sonnets 1-126 that are addressed to a younger man (and this sequence is called

the Fair Youth sequence)

sonnets 127- 153 are different and more sexual and talk about women

(this sequence is called the Dark Lady sequence)