Shakespeare's sonnets are thought to have been written for a private audience across several years, before being published in 1609. The verses that compose the sonnets are often subversive, elusive, and intimate, shaping an erotic body of poetry in the pursuit of the depths and parameters of emotion. He seems to have planned contrasting series—bitter sequences of lust and recrimination haunted by a married "dark lady," lyrics praising youth and beauty addressed to a "fair youth," and allegorical contemplations of Greek myth.