Shakespeare was born to what today would be called middle class parents. His birthplace was the small market town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Shortly after he married at age 18, Shakespeare apparently left Statford to seek his fortune in the theatrical world of London. Within a few years, he had become one of the city's leading actors and playwrights. By 1612, when he seems to have partially retired to Stratford, Shakespeare had become England's most popular playwright.
In 1609 a London publisher named Thomas Thorpe published a book called Shakespeare's Sonnets. The volume contained more than 150 sonnets that Shakespeare had written over the years. Scholars believe that Shakespeare addressed the first 126 sonnets to a young nobleman and that the next 26 concentrate on a women. But they have not been able to identify either person. Many scholars believe that Shakespeare had a passionate but somewhat reluctant love affair with the woman. Because the poems describe the woman as a brunette, she has become known as the "dark lady" of the sonnets. Sonnets 153 and 154 seem unrelated to the others, and some scholars doubt that Shakespeare wrote them.
Sonnet 116 is sometimes described as an exercise in definition. The essence of love and friendship for Shakespeare, it is apparent, is reciprocity or mutuality. In Sonnet 116, for example, the ideal relationship is referred to as " the marriage of true minds," a state which can be realized by the dedication and faithful:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. These lines echo the marriage services in the Book of common Prayer: "If any of you know cause or just impediment. . ." Thus we understand the Poet's attitude toward his subject. He then proceed to define such love, first negatively-that is explaining what it is not, always an effective rhetorical device: love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. He continues this formal method of definition now by advancing an affirmative definition: . . . it is an ever-fix'ed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star of every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. The "ever fix'ed mark," to be sure, is the traditional sea mark and guide for mariners, the North Star, whose value is inestimable, although its altitude has been determined. The star, unlike physical beauty, we are told, is not subject to the ravages of Time. And so true love, which is not "Time's fool" (plaything, as here used). In his definition Shakespeare then introduces the great concepts of Space and Time, applying them to his idea of true love: Love alters not with his bried hours and weeks, But bears it out to the edge of doom. "Bears it out" means survives, and "edge of doom," Judgement Day. Finally, with absolute conviction, the Poet challenges others to find him wrong in his definition: If this be error and upon {against} me proved, I never writ, and no man ever loved. This is his standard of friendship and love which he hopes that he and the Fair Young Man can achieve.
The narrater is in nature, he is describing the sunrise. The "celestial face" is the sun. A
storm is moving in , he's using a metaphor to describe the sun. The region cloud did something.
The real sun has no choice of whether to let the clouds come over him, but in his poem the sun
could have prevented the clouds from covering him. The narrator seems to be in love and has
been betrayed. The narrater is beginning to become mad and accusatory in the second sonnet.
The "sunshine breaking the clouds," means the sun, or the betrayer is trying to seek forgiveness.
The narrater is saying the actions are louder than words, he is also saying there's nothing you can
say to heal his pain, for the treachery has been committed. The narrater is quick and clever, he
has been hurt. He has made the person cry. Sonnet 35 shows the narrater to be gloating. The
narrator begins to justify the person's treachery. He's comparing the guy's sins to nature's woes.
The guy committed adultery. The adverse party is the narrater.
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