Each essay in The Critical Survey of Shakespeare’s Sonnets is devoted to a single sonnet and provides an in-depth critical analysis of the sonnet’s historical significance, literary technique and discusses its meaning to a contemporary audience. The themes put forward in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, written over 400 years ago, still hold value, meaning and significance to today’s audience. Some of the themes discussed in these Sonnets include: beauty, eternity, time’s destructiveness, sexuality, gender, love, depression, sorrow, memory, alienation, grieving, love as slavery, seasons and age, time, absence, love as strength, eternal youth, fidelity, true love, lust, truth, and body vs. soul.