The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint Book

These are quite beautiful poems, but what perhaps you didn't know or didn't remember, is that they actually tell a story of two loves both lost by the protagonist "Will", that of a young man and that of a "dark lady". Despite lots of research, no one has yet convincingly determined whether this was autobiographical (although most critics insist that it must be) and no one has convincingly found who, if it was autobiographical, Shakespeare was talking about. Sexually speaking, it is very ambiguous in describing the love of "Will" for his best friend to whom he loses the lady with "dun" (dark) colored skin and spikey black hair. The poems describe with exquisite (and complex!) poetry the evolution of the three-way relationship and the feeling of loss and emptiness that fills "Will" at its conclusion. Definitely some of the extraordinary poetry if somewhat difficult to understand with all the inversions of subjects and objects and so forth, but so worth a read!