Sonnet 1

“Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind” by Thomas Wyatt (1557)

Wyatt’s loose translation of a Petrarchan sonnet appears in the anthology Tottel’s Miscellany, which helped increase the popularity of the sonnet in Renaissance England by reviving this centuries-old poetic form. Shakespeare’s sonnets draw on this long tradition, coming at the tail end of the sonnet’s resurgence in the 16th century.

“Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare (1609)

“Sonnet 130,” which comes much later in Shakespeare’s sequence, offers a useful contrast to “Sonnet 1.” Unlike the young man of “Sonnet 1,” who is described with imagery of light and brightness, “Sonnet 130” is addressed to a dark lady, described as the opposite of the young man. Her dark eyes, hair, and skin shroud her in mystery and create a different power dynamic between speaker and addressee.

The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (c. 1230-1280)

Shakespeare’s use of rose imagery in “Sonnet 1” draws on a long poetic tradition of metaphorizing this flower. In The Romance of the Rose, a long narrative allegory about romantic and sexual love, roses are a much more direct symbol: When a male lover goes on a quest to pluck a rose, the plucking represents a sexual encounter, with the rose resembling the vulva. By casting a young man, rather than a woman, as the rose in this sonnet, Shakespeare upends a common trope.

“There is a Garden in Her Face” by Thomas Campion (1617)

In this poem also featuring a rose metaphor, Campion more traditionally uses the flower to describe the color of a woman’s cheeks and lips: The pink of roses is seen when a woman blushes and laughs. This comparison is an age-old trope in the Western poetic canon.