Philip Weller caricature
Philip and Weller hugging

Welcome to my web site, now under development for more than twenty years.   
-- Philip Weller, November 13, 1941 - February 1, 2021
Dr. Weller, an Eastern Washington University professor of English and Shakespearean scholar for more than 50 years.

Unique Sonnets by Shakespeare

The sonnets listed here are all unusual in some way. —If you're looking for the bawdy one, it's next to last on this list.
The one which shows that Shakespeare wasn't gay—maybe:
20: "A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted"
The two which end in the same couplet:
36: "Let me confess that we two must be twain"
96: "Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness"
The one which has an extra line:
99: "The forward violet thus did I chide"
The one in which the poet says that he has known the fair youth for three years:
104: "To me, fair friend, you never can be old"
The one which probably alludes to Queen Elizabeth:
107: "Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul"
The one which may express Shakespeare's embarrassment over being known as a playwright:
111: "O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide"
The one with only twelve lines, written entirely in couplets:
126: "O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power"
The one about playing a harpsichord:
128: "How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st"
The one about the power of lust:
129: "Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame"
The comic one about the "beauty" of his mistress:
130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
The ones which contain multiple puns on Shakespeare's first name:
135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will"
136: "If thy soul check thee that I come so near"
143: "Lo! as a careful huswife runs to catch"
The two which were published before the rest, in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599):
138: "When my love swears that she is made of truth"
145: "Those lips that Love's own hand did make "
The one in tetrameter, rather than pentameter.
145: "Those lips that Love's own hand did make "
The religious one:
146: "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth"
The very bawdy, naughty one:
151: "Love is too young to know what conscience is"
The last two, which look like they might have been written by an entirely different poet:
153: "Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep"
154: "The little Love-god lying once asleep"