Humanities Literature A Guide to the Sonnets of William Shakespeare Share Flipboard Email Print What Sonnets Did Shakespeare Write?. Literature Shakespeare Studying & Teaching Shakespeare's Life Tragedies Comedies Sonnets Best Sellers Classic Literature Contemporary Literature Plays & Drama Poetry Quotations Short Stories Children's & Young Adult Books View More by Lee Jamieson Lee Jamieson has a M.A. in theater studies and is the author of numerous books. He lectured for six years on theater studies at Stratford-upon-Avon College in the U.K. Updated September 28, 2017 Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, which were collected and published posthumously in 1609. Many critics segment the sonnets into three groups: The Fair Youth Sonnets (Sonnets 1 – 126)The first group of sonnets are addressed to a young man with whom the poet has a deep friendship.The Dark Lady Sonnets (Sonnets 127 – 152)In the second sequence, the poet becomes infatuated with a mysterious woman. Her relationship with the young man is unclear.The Greek Sonnets (Sonnets 153 and 154)The final two sonnets are very different and draw upon the Roman myth of Cupid, to whom the poet has already compared his muses. Other Groupings Other scholars lump the Greek Sonnets with the Dark Lady Sonnets and call out a different cluster (Nos. 78 to 86) as the Rival Poet Sonnets. This approach treats the subjects of the sonnets as characters and invites ongoing questions among scholars about the degree to which the sonnets may or may not have been autobiographical. Controversies Although it's generally accepted that Shakespeare wrote the sonnets, historians question certain aspects of how the sonnets came to print. In 1609, Thomas Thorpe published Shakes-Peares Sonnets; the book, however, contains a dedication by "T.T." (presumably Thorpe) that confounds scholars as to the identity of whom the book was dedicated, and whether the "Mr. W.H." in the dedication may be the muse for the Fair Youth Sonnets. The dedication in Thorpe's book, if it had been written by the publisher, may imply that Shakespeare himself did not authorize their publication. If this theory is true, it's possible that the 154 sonnets we know today don't constitute the totality of Shakespeare's work. Continue Reading