—Shall I compare thee to a summer's day…

—My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun…
 

—When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes…

Shakespeare’s immortal sonnets are a dazzling commixture of lustful emotional detail, silken bombast, and magical grandeur. The 154 sonnets (all but two of which are addressed to a treacherous ‘dark lady’ or fine-looking young man), comprise some of the most haunting and exquisite poetry ever written, and deal with such timeless subjects as love and infidelity, beauty and mortality, and the devastation wreaked by Time.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) was an English playwright poet, and actor, regarded as the world's pre-eminent dramatist, and the greatest writer in the English language. Author of Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet and King Lear, he is often called the “Bard of Avon,” England's national poet.