Revising Obsession in Shakespeare’s Sonnets 153 and 154

This article reevaluates Shakespeare’s sonnets 153 and 154 within the context of the 1609 Quarto, suggesting that only one of these anacreontics properly belongs to the sequence. The article first considers other moments of unintentional repetition in Shake-speare’s corpus to provide evidence that Shakespeare’s manuscript cancellations may have been overlooked by printers. Using 1) the bibliographic features of the Quarto, 2) Sonnet 153’s thematic and formal linkages to the preceding sequence, and 3) the aptness of 153 rather than 154 as a bridge to A Lover’s Complaint, the article argues that Shakespeare’s likely cancellation of 154 was ignored in Eld’s print shop for convenience or aesthetic concerns. While we may never know what shape Shakespeare’s Sonnets took in manuscript, this article reclaims 153 as an important conclusion to the sequence, challenging a tradition of criticism in which the curious doubling of these two sonnets has often removed them from serious consideration.