Sonnet 76: Why Is My Verse so Barren of New Pride

SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

The deceptively unsensational Sonnet 76 asks a simple question and provides to this a straightforward enough answer that will hardly come as a surprise: how is it that I write one sonnet after another and they all sound the same? Because "I always write of you."

With this one declaration it settles a debate that – in view of its very existence bafflingly – has more recently reappeared in scholarly circles: are these sonnets, such as we have them in the collection originally published in the Quarto Edition of 1609, addressed to or written about principally one person, or could they not also have been composed in the context of a whole raft of relationships over a much longer period than has generally been assumed?