ABSTRACT
Indeterminate in their chronology, destabilized by their textual cruxes, and opaque in much of their language, Shakespeare's Sonnets have nonetheless attracted curiously positivistic claims. In particular, critics who differ on many interpretive problems are nevertheless likely to agree that the direction of address of these poems can be established with certainty: the first 126 sonnets refer to and are generally addressed to the Friend, while the succeeding ones concern the Dark Lady. The past thirty years have witnessed trenchant challenges to many assertions in John Dover Wilson's book on these lyrics, such as his identification of the Friend with William Herbert; but his observation that “most readers…will not be disposed to deny authority to…[the] division into two sections” remains accurate. 1
