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SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, or simply '''The Sonnets''', is a collection of Poem s in Sonnet form written by William Shakespeare that deal with such themes as Love , Beauty , Politics , and Mortality . They were probably written over a period of several years. All 154 poems appeared in a 1609 collection, comprising 152 previously unpublished sonnets and two poems, numbers 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth") and 144 ("Two loves have I, of comfort and despair"), that had previously been published in a 1599 Miscellany entitled '' The Passionate Pilgrim ''. The Sonnets were published under conditions that have become unclear to history. Although the works were written by Shakespeare, it is not known if the publisher used an authorized manuscript from him, or an unauthorized copy. Also, there is a mysterious dedication at the beginning of the text wherein a certain "Mr. W.H." is described as "the onlie begetter" of the poems by the publisher Thomas Thorpe , but it is not known who this man was. The dedication refers to the poet as "Ever-Living", a phrase which has fueled the Shakespearean Authorship Debate due to its use as an epithet for the deceased (Shakespeare himself used the phrase in this way in ''Henry VI, part 1'' (IV, iii, 51-2) describing the dead Henry V as “ {Link without Title} hat ever-living man of memory”). Authorship proponents believe this phrase indicates that the real author of the sonnets was dead by 1609, whereas Shakespeare of Stratford lived until 1616.Fields, Bertram. ''Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare''. New York: Harper Collins, 2005, 114 Adding further to the authorship debate, Shakespeare's name is hyphenated on the title page and on the top of every other page in the book. The first 17 sonnets are written to a young man, urging him to marry and have children, thereby passing down his beauty to the next generation. These are called the Procreation Sonnets . Most of them, however, 18 - 126 , are addressed to a young man expressing the poet's love for him. Sonnets 127 - 152 are written to the poet's Mistress expressing his love for her. The final two sonnets, 153 - 154 , are Allegorical . The final thirty or so sonnets are written about a number of issues, such as the young man's infidelity with the poet's mistress, self-resolution to control his own lust, beleaguered criticism of the world, etc. DEDICATION TO MR. W.H. " of the sonnets.]] The only edition of the sonnets published in Shakespeare's lifetime, the 1609 Quarto , is dedicated to one "Mr. W.H.". The reality, identity and age of this person remain a mystery and have caused a great deal of speculation. The dedication in full reads:
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