David Kelly teaches courses in poetry and drama at College of Lake County and Oakton Community College, in Illinois. In the following essay, Kelly examines Shakespeare's "Sonnet 29" in terms of the dramatic techniques that it uses.

It seems that a sonnet, by itself, is a paltry thing, hardly worth the attention of serious critics. Those who have read the current criticism on Shakespeare know that little is written about any one poem alone, that the group of them are often addressed together. There are good reasons for this. Shakespeare appears to have written them all in a close period of time (unlike the lifetime output of a more active poet), so that they can be studied as a group. Also, they are much more personal than sonnets of the sixteenth century, offering critics a clearer view of how writers thought of life's relation to poetry at that...