Always need to prepare ...

It is looking very much like I'll be starting with a sonnet!

Andrew Gurr suggested it some time ago - sonnet 145 is likely to have been written early on - possibly when Shakespeare was still in his teens.

There is the serious possibility it was written to Anne, his soon to be wife - which makes it sort of 'sweet' and "Ahhhhhhh"-able.

This would certainly be the earliest of his writings.

I am having not-much-fun trying to sort out the dates of the sonnets - they were collected together and published in 1609 - and arranged in an order that makes a sort of narrative - but they were written in a different order.

Possibly the first 17 were in fact written a little later than the next sequence; and the dark lady poems earlier than the ones before!

What a life!

I am also doing all my preparation with a little programme available from the OU called Compendium: If I ever find a way to do it I'll publish the 'map' I make to go with the journey.

(Just think all journeys should be mapped.)