ABSTRACT
Shakespeare's Sonnets are traditionally divided into two groups. The first group, Sonnets 1 to 126, is thought to have been written to or about an unidentified young man, probably of noble birth, for whom Shakespeare expressed an idealized, yet almost sexual love. The second group, Sonnets 127 to 154, has as its principal theme poet's tormented affair with a black-haired, black-eyed woman of notorious promiscuity, the woman known as the 'dark lady'. Shakespeare and Emilia Bassano were linked by their common dependence on the elderly Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon. A.L. Rowse pointed out that Emilia's promiscuity and notoriety coincided with the probable dates of the dark lady sonnets, the years 1593 and 1594. The works that most closely echo these sonnets were written during this period — The Rape of Lucrece. Both Simon Forman and Shakespeare describe a woman who takes lovers from two specific and widely separated social groups, the aristocracy and those in some way outside 'normal' society.
