hey septimus. This could take a while, huh?
Looking at your other thread:
Sonnet 26 seems to be to be an unctuous suck-up to his patron, Wriothsley.
Sonnet 32 reads to me like an insecure young writer saying to his lover, “hey look, if you outlive me and re-read my stuff and it sucks, at least remember the love behind it.” Anne? Dark Lady? Wriothsley? Some bugger buddy? I don’t know.
Sonnet 36 is basically saying “our love is one, but my faults are mine alone. I feel guilty about something, so let me keep it from besmirching you.” I get why Oxfordians would like that sonnet, but it seems to me it could apply to anybody with a guilty secret. Maybe Shakespeare had a lover who was minor royalty? Maybe Shakespeare and Wriothsley did some experimenting?
Sonnet 39 seems to speak more specifically of (to back-use a modern label) gay love, the love that dare not speak its name. More unctuous stuff for Henry Wriothsley.
Sonnet 55 - your memory will live forever, so long as lovers read these words. OK. Shakespeare certainly had passion.
Sonnet 62 does seem strange if written in the early 1590’s, when many or most of the sonnets are assumed to have been written. However, not all of them were, and the dating of all the sonnets (except the couple that were printed in 1599) is unknown.
Sonnet 71 - a lot like 32. Mortality was a constant threat in Elizabethan England.
Sonnet 72 - more emo. When I die, I’ll be forgotten like yesterday’s garbage.
I have to take a break now. I haven’t read the essay you link that argues for Oxford, but right now I’m not seeing it.