In the mid to late 1500s, the well known writer, William Shakespeare created a set of sonnets. In total there were 154 sonnets written by Shakespeare. Now what is a sonnet? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a Sonnet is a poem made up of 14 lines that rhyme in a fixed pattern. These poems can have several different themes, but in Shakespeare’s case, they told a story. In this persuasive essay I will be analyzing sonnets, and writing about why Shakespeare’s love story could have been written to a man, and why he would conceal being a homosexual. When looking at the Sonnets, it is easy to fall into the misconception that Shakespeare was writing these poems to a woman, but when looking more deeply into them, it is easy to see that they are written mainly to a man. Shakespeare’s sonnets could have been written to a man because in many Sonnets Shakespeare used the pronoun his, they could have been …show more content…
According to the literary critic, James Winny the story concealed within the sonnets goes like this: Shakespeare urges the young man/his lover to marry him, and to have a child in order to spread his beauty down for generations. He then gets seperated by his lover. After that, Shakespeare’s lover, mad at Shakespeare has an affair with Shakespeare’s mistress. Shakespeare abandons his lover, and immediately regrets his decision. Because of his regret, he hallucinates, and cannot sleep until he forgives his love, and sees him again. Although Shakespeare conceals this story beneath his Sonnets, it is easy to see that this is true when analysing any one of his sonnets deeply. For example, in Sonnet 61, Shakespeare explains that he is hallucinating his lover, and he is not able to sleep. This is shown when reading the first and second line which say, “Is it thy will, thy image should keep