Shakespeare’s sonnets are usually grouped into two main sections: the fair youth sonnets and the dark lady sonnets. The fair youth sonnets are comprised of sonnets 1-126.

In these poems, Shakespeare spends a lot of time describing the beauty and actions of the fair youth, and it becomes clear that the poet greatly admires the youth as he urges him to marry and have children. There has been constant speculation about the relationship between poet and subject, with some critics believing the relationship to be a romantic one while others arguing that it's solely platonic.

Eventually, the fair youth and the poet both end up with the dark lady, and the poet struggles with this change.

The sonnets to the fair youth are often analyzed on their own without the context of the sequence. While this is fine, it has led to a lot of the most famous lines from the sonnets being taken out of context, as is the case with many of Shakespeare’s famous lines from his plays. For “Sonnet 55,” knowing the difference between the fair youth sequence and the dark lady sequence is important because the poem juxtaposes the beauty of the man to feminine time, which Shakespeare compares to forgetfulness, war, and death.