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suggested that Shakespeare's sonnets should be read as parodies in which
Shakespeare makes fun of the artificiality of the conventional sonnet
tradition. 21
She has established quite clearly that the sonnets of
Drayton, Daniel, Sidney, and Greville provided Shakespeare with the
matter, style, form, and even the cadence for successful parody. In
the "Dark Lady" poems, for example, "he created a travesty of the sonnet
lady, which highlights the artificiality of the sonneteers when they
rave against their mistresses" (p. 144). According to Wilson, Shakespeare
"borrowed" extensively from his contemporaries because his intent was to
create parody, to derive satisfaction from such things as "making play
with imagery or the situation, with exaggerating and mocking, with naive
explanations or expressions of surprise that his experience is different,
with translating sonnet situations into terms of reality and by treating
them seriously showing how absurd they are 11 (pp. 320-21). Most scholars
agree that the great majority of Shakespeare's sonnets were written
between 1593 and 1S96, although Wilson believes that early 1593 is the
latest possible date (p. 352). Perhaps it is unlikely, but it is
nevertheless possible, that in sonnet 144 Shakespeare was parodying
Tofte's Alba, a collection of thoroughly conventional "sonnets" which
included an uncomplimentary reference to Love's Labor's Lost. If this
is the case, sonnet 144 must have been written sometime after the
publication of Alba but before the appearance of The Passionate Pilgrim.
Or, if Shakespeare saw an early version of Alba, the poem could have
been earlier than the first part of 1598.
The relationship between Tofte and Shakespeare cannot be
explained with certainty; Tofte's works do demonstrate that he knew