Unique Sonnets by Shakespeare
The sonnets listed here are all unusual in some way. —If you're looking for the bawdy one, it's next to last on this list.
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The one which shows that Shakespeare wasn't gay—maybe:
- 20: "A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted"
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The two which end in the same couplet:
- 36: "Let me confess that we two must be twain"
- 96: "Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness"
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The one which has an extra line:
- 99: "The forward violet thus did I chide"
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The one in which the poet says that he has known the fair youth for three years:
- 104: "To me, fair friend, you never can be old"
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The one which probably alludes to Queen Elizabeth:
- 107: "Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul"
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The one which may express Shakespeare's embarrassment over being known as a playwright:
- 111: "O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide"
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The one with only twelve lines, written entirely in couplets:
- 126: "O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power"
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The one about playing a harpsichord:
- 128: "How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st"
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The one about the power of lust:
- 129: "Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame"
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The comic one about the "beauty" of his mistress:
- 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
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The ones which contain multiple puns on Shakespeare's first name:
- 135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will"
- 136: "If thy soul check thee that I come so near"
- 143: "Lo! as a careful huswife runs to catch"
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The two which were published before the rest, in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599):
- 138: "When my love swears that she is made of truth"
- 145: "Those lips that Love's own hand did make "
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The one in tetrameter, rather than pentameter.
- 145: "Those lips that Love's own hand did make "
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The religious one:
- 146: "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth"
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The very bawdy, naughty one:
- 151: "Love is too young to know what conscience is"
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The last two, which look like they might have been written by an entirely different poet:
- 153: "Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep"
- 154: "The little Love-god lying once asleep"