The Sonnets & a Lover's Complaint (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)

by William Shakespeare (Author), William Shakespeare (Author), John Kerrigan (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1986

  $3.54

  When a volume of poetry entitled Shake-speares Sonnets. Neuer before Imprinted appeared in 1609, Shakespeare was forty-five and most of his greatest plays had seen several performances. Some of the sonnets, speaking of the begetting of children, mortality and memory, art, desire and jealousy, are addressed to a beloved youth; others are addressed to a treacherous mistress, a dark lady. Appended to the sonnets is A Lover's Complaint, a beautiful poem in rhyme-royal in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her betrayal by a heartless seducer.While Shakespeare's biographers continue their investigations, readers may find the secret of the sonnets in the poetry itself. In this spirit John Kerrigan provides an illuminating Introduction to the volume as a whole, together with 258 pages of commentaries on the poems, a textual history, and suggestions for further reading.

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $3.36

  With their devastating depiction of lust and jealousy, love tangled with hate, hetrosexual and homosexual desire, Shakespeare's sonnets are among the most breathtaking-and mysterious-love poems yet written. The complete sequence is published here.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1986

  $6.45

• New

  paperback
  

  $11.40

  William Shakespeare is a global icon for his plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, but his poetic meditations on love are among the most powerful and evocative poems ever written. This Penguin Classics edition of Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint is edited by John Kerrigan. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' The language of Shakespeare's sonnets has become inseparable from the language of love in English; but the force and tenderness of these poems is undiminished by age. When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The 154 sonnets - all but two of which are addressed to a beautiful young man, 'Mr W.H.', or a treacherous 'dark lady' - contain some of the most exquisite and haunting poetry ever written, and deal with eternal subjects such as love and infidelity, memory and mortality, and the destruction wreaked by Time. Also included is A Lover's Complaint, originally published with the sonnets, in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her betrayal by a heartless seducer. In his illuminating introduction, John Kerrigan examines how the sonnets are intertwined, the ways in which these works have been interpreted and the themes running through them. This edition also includes further reading, commentaries on each poem, a textual history, variant and further sonnets and an index of first lines. If you enjoyed Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, you might like John Milton's Paradise Lost, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it' John Keats