The Sonnets by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's sonnets are poems that William Shakespeare wrote on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609; however there are a few additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's Lost. The primary source of Shakespeare's sonnets is a quarto published in 1609 titled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.