Shakespeare's Sonnets

by William Shakespeare (Author), William Shakespeare (Author), Stanley Wells (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1987

  $3.25

  Shakespeare's Sonnets is the most famous collection of love poems in the English language. Beautiful, poignant, and intriguing, they describe the poet's passionate friendship with a young man, his friend's seduction by the poet's own mistress, his friend's relationship with a rival poet, and most famously, Shakespeare's humiliated infatuation with the Dark Lady, `a woman coloured ill', who, far from being the marble-hearted femme fatale of fashionable sonnet sequences, is `the bay where all men ride'. These 154 poems have aroused speculation ever since they were written: who are the poet's handsome friend, his rival, and the Dark Lady? Who is the mysterious Mr W. H., 'the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets', to whom the publisher dedicated them? Despite much laboured study on the subject, the poems have kept their secrets. _ The poems are presented here, with an informative introduction and in a freshly edited text, along with A Lover's Complaint and little-known alternative versions of four of the sonnets. This book is intended for students and lovers of Shakespeare's work; readers of love poetry.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1985

  $3.25

  Shakespeare's sonnets are the most famous collection of love poems in the English language. Here Shakespeare celebrated his passionate friendship with a young man, deplored his friend's seduction by Shakespeare's own mistress, expressed his chagrin at the friend's relationship with a rival poet, and in the final group of poems explored his own humiliated infatuation with a woman colored ill --the Dark Lady who has tempted his better angel from him. Lyrically beautiful and psychologically fascinating, the sonnets exert a double appeal: as individual poems, and as a complexly interrelated sequence. All 154 poems are presented here in a freshly edited text, along with Shakespeare's wry, touching portrait of a forsaken maiden in A Lover's Complaint, a poem first printed with the sonnets in 1609. This volume also includes little-known alternative versions of four of the sonnets. The text of this edition is that prepared for the forthcoming Complete Oxford Shakespeare. About the Editor: Stanley Wells is General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and Senior Research Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford.