Shakespeare's Poems Third Series

by Shakespeare, William; Woudhuysen, H. R.; Duncan-Jones, Katherine

• ISBN13: 9781903436875
• ISBN10: 1903436877
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-28
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare

Summary

In 1593 Shakespeare awoke and found himself famous. Lines from his comic, erotic, tragic poem Venus and Adonis were on everyone’s lips.The appearance in 1594 of the darkly reflective and richly descriptive Rape of Lucrece confirmed his fame as 'Sweet Master Shakespeare', Elizabethan England's most brilliant non-dramatic poet. Shorter poems in this volume testify further to Shakespeare’s versatility and to his poetic fame. Some, like the much-debated ‘Phoenix and Turtle’, pose problems of meaning; others raise questions about authorship and authenticity. Detailed annotation and a full Introduction seek to resolve such difficulties while also locating Shakespeare's poems in their literary context, which includes his own career as a playwright.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Preliminaries	p. 1
Literary history: Sweet Shakespeare	p. 4
Venus and Adonis and Lucrece	p. 10
1593-4: Idle hours well spent	p. 10
Political context: Southampton, Clapham, Burghley	p. 26
Protagonists: visible and audible women	p. 31
Literary sources: boy and man	p. 57
Social context: plague and pleasure	p. 68
Afterlife of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece	p. 78
1598-9: The Passionate Pilgrim	p. 82
'The Phoenix and Turtle'	p. 91
1601: Love's Martyr	p. 91
Shakespeare and the Welsh	p. 95
John Salusbury, literary patron	p. 97
1601: Salusbury's difficulties	p. 107
'The best and chiefest of our moderne writers'	p. 111
The Phoenix riddle	p. 118
Conclusion: "Tis brief my lord'	p. 123
The Narrative and Other Poems
Narrative poems
Venus and Adonis	p. 125
The Rape of Lucrece	p. 231
Other poems
The Passionate Pilgrim	p. 385
Verses in Love's Martyr ['The Phoenix and Turtle']	p. 419
Poems and inscriptions with contemporary or early attributions to Shakespeare
AT 1: [A song, 'Shall I die?']	p. 431
AT 2: [Upon a pair of gloves]	p. 437
AT 3: [Verses on the Stanley tomb at Tong]	p. 439
AT 3: [West end]	p. 439
AT 3: [East end]	p. 441
AT 4: [On Ben Jonson]	p. 447
AT 5: [Inscription for Shakespeare's coat of arms]	p. 449
AT 6: [An epitaph on Elias James]	p. 451
AT 7: [An epitaph on John Combe (I)]	p. 453
AT 8: [An epitaph on John Combe (II)]	p. 455
AT 9: [Upon the King]	p. 457
AT 10: [Rutland impresa: lost motto]	p. 461
AT 11: [An epitaph upon himself]	p. 463
Poems with modern attributions to Shakespeare
MAT 1: [The Lucy ballad]	p. 464
MAT 2: [The Skipwith verses]	p. 466
MAT 3: [The Stanford poem]	p. 467
MAT 4: A Funeral Elegy	p. 468
MAT 5: Tom O'Bedlam's song to K. James'	p. 469
Appendices
The texts	p. 471
Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece	p. 471
Venus and Adonis	p. 476
The Rape of Lucrece	p. 482
The Passionate Pilgrim	p. 489
Verses in Love's Martyr	p. 498
Attributed poems	p. 503
This edition	p. 504
Later editions	p. 514
Sources for the narrative poems	p. 522
Sources for Venus and Adonis	p. 522
The story of Venus and Adonis	p. 522
The story of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis	p. 525
Sources for The Rape of Lucrece	p. 527
Livy	p. 527
Ovid	p. 531
Facsimile of 'Poetical Essays'	p. 535
Abbreviations and references	p. 546
Abbreviations used in notes	p. 546
Works by and partly by Shakespeare	p. 547
Manuscripts and inscriptions collated	p. 548
Early editions of Shakespeare and other Authors collated	p. 549
Editions of Shakespeare collated	p. 550
Other works cited	p. 552
Manuscripts	p. 552
Printed books and articles	p. 552
Index	p. 569
Index of first lines	p. 593
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.