William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609. The sonnets cover such themes as the passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty and mortality. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; the last 28 are either addressed to, or refer to, a woman. Shakespeare's sonnets are considered a continuation of the sonnet tradition that swept through the Renaissance from Petrarch in 14th-century Italy and was finally introduced in 16th-century England by Thomas Wyatt and was given its rhyming metre and division into quatrains by Henry Howard. With few exceptions, Shakespeare's sonnets observe the stylistic form of the English sonnet—the rhyme scheme, the 14 lines, and the metre. But Shakespeare's sonnets also introduce such significant departures of content.
