By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Every sonnet sequence should have at least one poem about sleeplessness. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) had ‘Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace’ in his Astrophil and Stella, and, in Sonnet 27 beginning ‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed’, Shakespeare has his sleepless poem, which we’re going to analyse here.