Close Readings · The Sonnets
Shakespeare Sonnets on the Web
The sonnets, read one at a time. Slowly.
Now reading · Sonnet 1
This Love Poem Is Actually a Lawsuit
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die…
The most famous love poems in English open with a legal demand: be fruitful, or answer for it.
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The Sequence
1 of 154
1
From fairest creatures we desire increase
This Love Poem Is Actually a Lawsuit
Sonnet 2 is next. 153 to go.