Who was William Shakespeare's audience when he wrote his poems?
His two long poems, Venus & Adonis and Lucrece, were dedicated by him to Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. The hero of Venus & Adonis (who differs in some significant respects from the Adonis of Shakespeare's source material) appears to be a projection of the Earl, as he was at the time of composition. However, it is clear that Shakespeare wrote these poems for publication and public consumption, notwithstanding the dedication, and rightly so since Venus and Adonis in particular sold like hotcakes.Evidence suggests that the young lord was also the original audience for those manuscript poems which were subsequently edited and printed under the title Shakespeare's Sonnets. For a summary of this evidence read The Biography in Shakespeare's Sonnets, at the link below. Shakespeare apparently did not write the sonnets for the purpose of publication as witness Francis Meres' reference in 1597 to Shakespeare's "sugared sonnets among his private friends". The sonnets were not published until over a decade later.