By 1592, Shakespeare was a well-known writer in London. His first plays included three parts of Henry VI, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Titus Andronicus. His first printed works were Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, both long poems dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. In 1594, Shakespeare worked with a group of other people to form a new theatre. They worked under the patronage of Lord Chamberlain, and with Richard Burbage as the leading actor, produced an average of two plays a year.
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Although they weren't published until 1609, many believe Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in the 1590s, when he began to become famous in London. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter with complicated rhyme schemes. The English or Shakespearean sonnet contains the following rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnets became popular in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and were revolutionized not only by Shakespeare in England, but by others all across Europe. Sonnets were given new life also in Italy by Tasso, Michelangelo, Bembo, and Castiglione, in England by Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, and Spenser, in France by members of the Pl�iade, in Spain by Bosc�n and Garcilaso de la Vega, and in Portugal by Cam�es. (http://www.fofweb.com/History/Reference.asp?ID=9890)
Here is his Sonnet XXIX:
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Shakespeare's Plays
Shakespeare's plays were performed on stages like this one of the reconstructed Globe Theater.
