Elizabethan Sonnets

"The unifying element found most often...has been the 'proud fair' or donna angelicata to whom the poems are addressed" (Nardo 4). "It wasd preoccupied with an over-riding, all-important engagement of the self with an other; hence with the exploration of polarity. That 'other' might stand in the position of mistress, friend, or even godhead; in any case a relationship was created which drew into its magnetic field the poet's whole personality; his sense of his environment; his response to nature, time and mutability; his political, religious or philosophical beliefs" (J.W. Lever).