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.

Sonnet 126 is the last poem in which William Shakespeare addresses his younger lover and so marks the end of the Fair Youth series in the collection first published in 1609.

The sonnet stands out for its tenderness and the gentle tone with which it reminds the young man that even he – beautiful as he is and ever youthful as he may seem – must ultimately be surrendered by nature to all-consuming time, and for the quiet resignation with which it accepts this as the universal and inescapable truth that is all our fate.
Beyond that, the poem is also formally exceptional: consisting as it does of six rhyming couplets, it isn't strictly speaking a sonnet at all, though either Shakespeare himself or somebody else has furnished it with two sets of empty brackets where a sonnet's closing couplet would normally be. And so Sonnet 126 is genuinely unique: there is none other in Shakespeare's canon like it.

Sonnet 125 is the last in this group of three which effectively concludes the series of sonnets that concern themselves with William Shakespeare's love for his young man.

Sonnet 126 also speaks to the Fair Youth directly, but it forms almost a coda, an epilogue so to speak, to the body of poems addressing their relationship.

Here, in Sonnet 125, Shakespeare once more acknowledges that what he has to offer is not status, nobility, riches, or power, but an honest love that comes from the heart: an admiration, respect, and liking for the young nobleman that is not borne out of duty or a desire to manoeuvre himself into a favoured position, but out of a genuine affection, which he senses, and expresses, he receives in return.

Having denied time the power to make his love change in the previous poem, William Shakespeare now with Sonnet 124 turns his attention to politics, statehood, and the fashions of a notoriously fickle society, and further delineates his love for his young man against such other, more trivial, more volatile, much more feeble affections as it may be surrounded by and as it may be finding itself compared to or accused of being.

When Sonnet 123 addressed time itself directly, this sonnet speaks to no-one in particular but makes a general, and even bolder, assertion that his love is unmatched by any other; that it, in itself, is a kingdom, one might say, which does not rise and fall with fortune or the ever-fluid vagaries of opinion and manipulated opportunity but stands strong and singularly tall.