SOURCE: Davey, James Joseph. “The Function of the Dark Lady in Shakespeare's Sonnets,” in The Function of the Dark Lady in Shakespeare's Sonnets, pp. 5-27. Trieste, Italy: Università Degli Studi Di Trieste, 1986.

In the following essay, Davey contends that in Shakespeare's sonnets to the dark lady, the poet moves away from the idealization of the first group of sonnets—those addressed to the young man—and instead emphasizes the dark lady's physical, earthly nature and beauty.

Shakespeare's Sonnets, though read through with exquisite pleasure, though capable of cutting deeply into the tender marrow of the sensitive reader, are certainly not easily approached on a more critical plane. The poetic sense of the poems themselves seems to defy any attempt at simple arrangement into a neatly unified story granting a flowing read from first to last; indeed, they are enveloped in deep mystery, opening themselves only to the most...