The Sonnets and Other Poems (31 page)

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 Vidal

Copyright © 2007, 2009 by The Royal Shakespeare Company

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

“Royal Shakespeare Company,” “RSC,” and the RSC logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Royal Shakespeare Company.

The versions of the sonnets and other poems and the corresponding footnotes that appear in this volume were originally published in
William Shakespeare Complete Works,
edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, published in 2007 by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-1-58836-835-5

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