In the bulk of the sonnets the writer professes to describe his infatuation with a beautiful youth and his wrath with a disdainful mistress, who alienates the boy's affec tion and draws him into dissolute courses. But any strictly literal or autobiographic interpretation has to meet a for midable array of difficulties. Two general objections present themselves on the threshold of the discussion. In the first place, the autobiographic interpretation is to a large extent in con?ict with the habit of mind and method of work which are disclosed in the rest of Shakespeare's achievement. In the second place, it credits the poet with humiliating experiences of which there is no hint elsewhere.