In his astonishingly frank Sonnet 133 William Shakespeare attempts to come to terms with the fact that his young lover is also having an affair with his mistress.

The sonnet in one fell swoop answers two principal questions: first, what 'black deeds' of his Dark Lady's he may be referring to in the closing couplet of Sonnet 131, and second, who the woman might be that appears in the crisis which besets his relationship with the young man between Sonnets 33 and 42.

And while there is of course no external, cast-iron proof that these sonnets do constellate to form a coherent picture, Sonnet 133 is in fact only the first of several sonnets to strongly suggest they do.

What it leaves no doubt about, and what subsequent sonnets will make even more explicitly clear, is that William Shakespeare is for the second time in the collection talking about a relationship that has turned triangular.

With Sonnet 132, William Shakespeare suspends the charge brought against his mistress at the end of the previous sonnet that she is 'black' in nothing so much as in her deeds, and instead pleads with her to have pity on him as he suffers under her disdain for him. At first glance and in isolation it might seem, then, that such 'black' deeds as were mentioned in the closing couplet of Sonnet 131 are nothing but this attitude of hers towards him, but as we saw then and also discuss here, this is unlikely to be the case since a 'ladylike' level of decorum requires a woman at the time to be quite unapproachable and at least apparently aloof, and Sonnet 133 will confirm in no uncertain terms that the deeds in question are of a different nature altogether.
The sonnet thus stands in a long tradition of poetry that has a male lover pine for his unattainable and/or contemptuous mistress, and while on the surface it appears to express itself in positively chaste tones – certainly when compared to the exceptionally explicit Sonnet 129 – it still carries some subtle but nonetheless perfectly evident sexual undertones which it combines, so we get the impression, with just a tinge of irony.

Sonnet 131 connects directly to Sonnet 130 and now invokes a further poetic trope, that of the tyrannous mistress who makes her admirer to groan for love, even though this woman is – as Sonnet 130 made clear – categorically different to those other beauties traditionally so characterised and, as this poem also is fairly quick to point out, her beauty is not universally considered to have the capacity to make a man thus suffer an aching desire for her.

​Shakespeare then once again plays on his awareness of this circumstance and again acknowledges, indeed asserts, that as far as he is concerned she fully has that power so ascribed to other ladies with their light-skinned, fair-haired beauty, and that her darker skin and black hair to him constitute the most beautiful thing there is, only to then in the closing couplet ambush her with a surprising twist: it is not, he startlingly declares, your outward appearance that is black, as in 'ugly,' it is your deeds that make you so, and that, as far as I can tell, is where you get your bad reputation from.

With Sonnet 130, William Shakespeare, from the first, famous and oft-quoted line onwards, strikes a note possibly of defiance, possibly of satire, possibly both, subverting the traditional idolisation of a lover's object of desire through poetry and putting down a second powerful marker in quick succession that his mistress is different to other mistresses eulogised in sonnet form of then current fashion, not only but particularly because with her tan skin and black hair she doesn't fit the standard ideal of beauty of his day.

In a tone that to us – and out context – sounds startlingly disparaging, he de-deifies and in doing so humanises her, and he once again asserts that both false beauty and false praise of beauty are not his style.

Sonnet 129 is the most explicitly sexual, and therefore sexually explicit, poem in the collection so far, and it is the first to betray a deep unease on William Shakespeare's part with his own desire for his mistress. The language he employs to characterise the sexual act with her oscillates from ecstasy of expectation to post-coital depression, even disgust, with a vocabulary in-between that is reminiscent more of a war zone than of a romantic roll in the hay.

With Sonnet 128, William Shakespeare employs the well-worn poetic trope of a lover who envies the musical instrument being played by his mistress its proximity to her and the delight of her touch. He either imagines or recalls watching her play a harpsichord or similar keyboard and wishes he could trade places with the keys that seem to be kissing her fingertips. But this not being possible, or – as he actually puts it – the keys enjoying themselves as much as they do, he suggests that she continue to allow the keys to kiss her fingers, while he should be allowed to kiss her lips.

Sonnet 127 is the first of 26 poems in the 1609 collection which together are generally known as the Dark Lady Sonnets. While William Shakespeare himself never uses the expression 'Dark Lady' any more than he uses the term 'Fair Youth' in these sonnets, it is entirely clear from this sonnet onwards that this much shorter section concerns itself with a woman who has dark hair, dark eyes, and a complexion that is most likely tan or olive, as opposed to pale.
The sonnet sets a tone that is ambiguous, somewhat distanced, perhaps slightly ironic, perhaps also quite sincere, but neither of these in an obvious, let alone straightforward way, and it establishes from the outset that the person our poet is now talking about is his 'mistress', and that she does not fit the hitherto or until recently accepted ideal of beauty. In fact, she represents, so the sonnet tells us, the exact opposite of what used to be considered beautiful, but although Shakespeare does not exactly sound overjoyed at her kind of beauty being recognised, he still values this genuine, natural beauty above the cosmetic artifice that apparently has now become the fashion.

In this special episode, Sebastian Michael looks at the first 126 Sonnets in the 1609 collection and examines the principal questions they present:

- Is there a Fair Youth at all?

- If so, is this the same young man throughout, or could it be that the first 17 poems, the Procreation Sonnets, are addressed to someone else?

- And if there is a Fair Youth, who is it?

While there will most likely never be answers that can be offered with cast-iron certainty, a detailed analysis of the textual and external evidence we have does yield significant pointers and offers an idea as to where, on a scale of plausibility, we may locate them.