The Sonnets and Other Poems

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Book: Read The Sonnets and Other Poems for Free Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
to
The Four Plays in One
(lost, except for
A Yorkshire Tragedy
, mostly by Thomas Middleton)
1606
The Tragedy of Macbeth
(surviving text has additional scenes by Thomas Middleton)
1606–07
The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
1608
The Tragedy of Coriolanus
1608
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
, with George Wilkins
1610
The Tragedy of Cymbeline
1611
The Winter

s Tale
1611
The Tempest
1612–13
Cardenio
, with John Fletcher (survives only in later adaptation called
Double Falsehood,
by Lewis Theobald)
1613
Henry VIII (All Is True)
, with John Fletcher
1613–14
The Two Noble Kinsmen
, with John Fletcher

FURTHER READING
    Auden, W. H., Introduction to Signet Classics edition of the
Sonnets
, ed. William Burto (1964). A poet’s reading, with some attention to the question of homosexuality.
    Bate, Jonathan, “Sexual Poetry,” chap. 2 of
Shakespeare and Ovid
(1993), “Shakespeare’s Autobiographical Poems?” chap. 3 of
The Genius of Shakespeare
(1997, revised edition 2008), and “The Perplexities of Love,” chap. 12 of
Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare
(2008). Two different takes on the sonnets and an essay on the Ovidianism of the narrative poems by the editor of this volume.
    Berryman, John,
Berryman

s Shakespeare
, ed. John Haffenden (1999). Includes reflections on the sonnets by one of modern poetry’s greatest sonnet writers.
    Booth, Stephen,
An Essay on Shakespeare

s Sonnets
(1969). Excellent close reading. See also the extraordinarily (excessively?) rich annotation in Booth’s Yale edition of
Shakespeare

s Sonnets
(1977).
    Dubrow, Heather,
Captive Victors: Shakespeare

s Narrative Poems and Sonnets
(1987). Very good on oxymoronic language.
    Edmondson, Paul, and Stanley Wells,
Shakespeare

s Sonnets
(2004). Sane introductory study.
    Empson, William, numerous passages in
Seven Types of Ambiguity
(1930) and an essay on Sonnet 94 (“They that have power to hurt”) in
Some Versions of Pastoral
(1935). Unsurpassed as readings of the sonnets.
    Fineman, Joel,
Shakespeare

s Perjured Eye: the Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets
(1986). Dense and challenging theoretical study, strongly influenced by the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan.
    Hammond, Paul,
Figuring Sex between Men from Shakespeare to Rochester
(2002). Thoughtful readings of a cross section of poets.
    Keach, William,
Elizabethan Erotic Narratives: Irony and Pathos in the Ovidian Poetry of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Their Contemporaries
(1977). Equally good on both Shakespeare and his poetic contemporaries.
    Kerrigan, John,
Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and

Female Complaint
” (1991). Critical anthology placing “A Lover’s Complaint” in its tradition.
    Smith, Bruce,
Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare

s England
(1991). Valuable context, especially good on Barnfield’s “Ganymede” poems.
    Vendler, Helen,
The Art of Shakespeare

s Sonnets
(1997). An edition with rich commentary.
    Vickers, Brian,
Shakespeare,

A Lover

s Complaint

and John Davies of Hereford
(2007). The powerful case against Shakespeare’s authorship of the “Complaint.” But see also Macdonald P. Jackson’s response in
Review of English Studies
, September 2007.
    Vickers, Nancy, “‘The blazon of sweet beauty’s best’: Shakespeare’s
Lucrece
,” in
Shakespeare and the Question of Theory
, ed. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (1985), pp. 95–115. Strong feminist reading.
    Wilde, Oscar,
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
, in
Complete Short Fiction
, ed. Ian Small (1995). Brilliantly provocative fantasy.

THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
    Maya Angelou

A. S. Byatt

Caleb Carr

Christopher Cerf

Harold Evans

Charles Frazier

Vartan Gregorian

Jessica Hagedorn

Richard Howard

Charles Johnson

Jon Krakauer

Edmund Morris

Azar Nafisi

Joyce Carol Oates

Elaine Pagels

John Richardson

Salman Rushdie

Oliver Sacks

Carolyn See

Gore

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