The Sonnets

by William Shakespeare, G. Blakemore Evans (Editor), Stephen Orgel (Introduction)

Overview

In his own time, Shakespeare was best known to the reading public as a poet, and even today copies of his Sonnets regularly outsell everything else he wrote. For this edition, Stephen Orgel offers a warmly personal and original introduction to Shakespeare's best-loved and most widely read poems. Careful readings emphasize their sexual and temperamental ambiguity, their textual history and the special perils an editor faces when modernizing the original quarto's spelling, punctuation, and even layout. The edition retains the text of the Sonnets prepared by Gwynne Evans, together with his detailed notes on each, and a line-by-line commentary. Throughout, the 'voices' of the sonnets appear in all their intricacy and dramatic power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781139836463
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/22/2006
Series:	The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, and was baptized on 26 April 1564. His father was a glove maker and wool merchant and his mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a well-to-do local land owner. Shakespeare was probably educated in Stratford's grammar school. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had a daughter the following year and twins in 1585.

Shakespeare's theatrical life seems to have commenced around 1590. We do know that he was part of the Lord Chamberlain's Company, which was renamed the King's Company in 1603 when James I succeeded to the throne. The Company acquired interests in two theatres in the Southwark area of London, near the banks of the Thames - the Globe and the Blackfriars.

Shakespeare's poetry was published before his plays, with two poems appearing in 1593 and 1594, dedicated to his patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Most of Shakespeare's sonnets were probably written at this time as well.

Records of Shakespeare's plays begin to appear in 1594, and he produced roughly two a year until around 1611. His earliest plays includeHenry VIandTitus Andronicus.A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of VeniceandRichard IIall date from the mid to late 1590s. Some of his most famous tragedies were written in the early 1600s; these includeHamlet, Othello, King Lear, MacbethandAntony & Cleopatra. His late plays, often known as the Romances, date from 1608 onwards and includeThe Tempest.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. The first collected edition of his works was published in 1623 and is known as "the First Folio." 

Andrew McMillan's first collection,physical, was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award; it also won a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Northern Writers' Award and the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection,playtime, won the inaugural Polari Prize, and his most recent collection ispandemonium.

McMillan is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Date of Death:

2018

Place of Birth:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Place of Death:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

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Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations and conventions; Introduction Stephen Orgel; Note on the text; The Sonnets; The commentary; Textual analysis; Appendix: manuscript copies of the Sonnets; Reading list; Index of first lines.

Editorial Reviews

Octavo continues to provide digital access to rare and important literary works. Only 13 originals survive of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Never Before Imprinted, first published in London in 1609. This disc provides page-by-page views from the quarto held in the Grenville collection of The British Library. The 154 sonnets, plus an 11-page poem, "A Lover's Complaint," appear in the typeface of the day. The images are accompanied by a text commentary by Arthur Freeman, with notes on the binding and collation, provenance, and viewing tips. One continuous PDF holds it all, and Adobe Acrobat tabs must be used to maneuver through the document. While this arrangement makes individual word search and copy-and-paste possible, navigation is not without its challenges. A specific sonnet cannot be located quickly unless one enters its number into a simple search. And because the volume was rebound and thickened with extra sheets during Thomas Grenville's ownership, 42 of the 116 views are of blank pages. Academics and archivists may delight in such primary-source integrity; unwary researchers will be frustrated when they find themselves lost in the midst of the void. Sonnets can be purchased at a discount when bundled with Octavo's similar CD-ROMs of Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies and Poems. Bottom Line Recommended for scholars, archivists, collectors, and academic and special libraries that serve those patrons. For casual readers, existing publications, such as Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1997), which includes facsimiles of the 1609 prints of each sonnet along with analysis, should suffice.-Corinne H. Smith, Ware, MA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"The great master who knew everything . . . an unspeakable source of delight."  —Charles Dickens

From the Publisher

Rich in melody and wordplay, Shakespeare’s sonnets are, of all his work, the best-suited to audio production--while also the most demanding in vocal delivery and interpretation. Woven through the sonnets, though in no organized or consecutive manner, is the most amazing personal story, a love triangle that’s funny, shocking and weird--baring, or seeming to, the author’s most intimate secrets. John Gielgud’s slightly abridged two-CD WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: THE SONNETS, recorded for Caedmon in 1963, is still a standard, and an excellent choice for students. D.W. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

APR/MAY 00 - AudioFile