Of Sonnet 131, they gloss the final couplet thus: “Your physical blackness is as nothing compared to the blackness of your behaviour, and that is why others speak ill of you.” What’s important to note, firstly, is that the “physical blackness” of the woman being addressed holds the poem’s speaker in thrall. “Your blackness is most beautiful” is how they “translate” it; hardly a damning conceit. 

Moreover, in his day, the distinction between “fair” and “black” wasn’t some automatic racial marker, more a trope relating to types of appearance. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona for instance, the wronged (and disguised) Julia archly refers to herself as “black” to suggest that – unprotected from the sun – she is now less pale/ fair than she was.

To deem particular passing sentiments reprehensibly ugly to modern sensibilities is to overlook the beauty, originality and mystery of each sonnet in particular and the sequence overall, which luxuriates in paradox and the turmoil of the heart. However, if you’re set on looking for perturbing material, stuff you could disapprove of by applying a super-sensitive modern lens, it’s there at every turn.

Just look at the repeated imprecations, addressed to a young male (beloved), to procreate – such casual ageism, such male entitlement to marry in order to “breed”! Take Sonnet 5: “Never-resting time leads summer on to hideous winter.” Or Sonnet 11. “Let those whom nature hath not made for store /Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish” – let ugly people die out!

One of the best-known lines – “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” – reminds us how preoccupied the poems are with going wrinkly with age.

The poet Don Paterson calls the Dark Lady sonnets “a bitter essay in misogyny, lust, post-coital suicide and self-hatred”. He’s right. The Sonnets are steeped in myriad hard-won truths about our brief span. They trade in rich, unsettling ideas and that’s the reason why they endure and remain so loved.