that animates the Amores. Shakespeare, however, regards the beloved object highly as the all-inclusive focus. Indeed, justification of the lover's existence marks the decisive new start for European love poetry in the thirteenth century. Despite Shakespeare's interest in and references of Ovid in his Sonnets, the second decade of the seventeenth century brought about a departure from the Ovidian territory that Renaissance sonneteering had cultivated. Shakespeare tended to ban mythology from his Sonnets. Of the few mythological allusions Shakespeare incorporates into the sonnets, seldom are they depicted in the same way Ovid depicts them in his Metamorphoses. In Sonnet 53, Adonis is paired with Helen as an exemplar of human beauty (53.5, 7); Mars’ name appears, though not Venus (55.7); ‘ Saturne’ laughs and dances with ‘proud pide Aprill’ (98.2–4); the nightingale is called Philomel (102.7) and the phoenix is mentioned (19.4). In the procreation sonnets, a reference to the myth of Narcissus is clearly intended by Shakespeare. Moreover, the latter half of the Sonnets depicts less flesh in the form of seduction. In the dark lady poems, the seduction has already succeeded; its consequences are overwhelmingly shame and anger. Desire in the young man is of a different order, intense but also idealized and Platonic in a way which male Petrarchists writing about women often attempt but seldom achieve. Shakespeare calls his young man "sweet boy" (108, 5) and alludes occasionally to "rosie lips and cheeks" (116, 9), but is otherwise restrained and abstract. Petrarch's and Shakespeare's lovers Although Petrarch is accredited with perfection of the sonnet, Shakespeare still made changes in sonnet form and composition 200 years after Petrarch's death. While Petrarch's sonnets focused mainly on one hub, Shakespeare developed many subjects within his themes such as insomnia, slave of love, blame, dishonesty, and sickness. Despite creating complicated plots, Shakespeare also manages to place ulterior motifs among his two lovers, building new poetic form where Petrarch left off. Petrarch's sonnets were dedicated solely to Laura. She is thought to be an imaginary figure and a play on the name Laurel, the leaves with which Petrarch was honored for being the poet laureate and the very same honor he longed for in his sonnets as a “Laurel Wreath”. The name game has a further layer: "L'aura" is also "gold", the colour of her hair. In the allegorical canzone 323 (Standomi un giorno solo a la fenestra), we see that