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.

About the Author
Stanley Wells is Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, and Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, 1988-97, now Emeritus Professor. He is one of the foremost Shakespeare scholars of his generation. He has edited The Complete Oxford Shakespeare, An Oxford Anthology of Shakespeare, and The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, amongst others.

Reviews
Review from previous edition the most beautifully printed text available * James Fenton, The Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780192804464
Author William Shakespeare
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 229g
Dimensions(mm) 195mm * 128mm * 14mm