William Shakespeare - The Complete Poems of Shakespeare

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The Complete Poems of Shakespeare

Although best known for his plays, William Shakespeare (15641616) was also a poet who achieved extraordinary depth and variety in only a few key works. This edition of his poetry provides detailed notes, commentary and appendices resulting in an academically thorough and widely readable edition to Shakespeares poetry.

The editors present his non-dramatic poems in the chronological order of their print publication: the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece ; the metaphysical Let the Bird of Loudest Lay (often known as The Phoenix and the Turtle ); all 154 Sonnets and A Lovers Complaint . In headnotes and extensive annotations to the texts, Cathy Shrank and Raphael Lyne elucidate historical contexts, publication histories and above all the literary and linguistic features of poems whose subtleties always reward careful attention.

Substantial appendices trace the sources for Shakespeares narrative poems and the controversial text The Passionate Pilgrim , as well as providing information about poems posthumously attributed to him and the English sonnet sequence. Shrank and Lyne guide readers of all levels with a glossary of rhetorical terms, an index of the poems (titles and first lines) and an account of Shakespeares rhymes informed by scholarship on Elizabethan pronunciation. With all these scholarly resources supporting a newly edited, modern-spelling text, this edition combines accessibility with layers of rich information to inform the most sophisticated reading.

Cathy Shrank is Professor of Tudor and Renaissance Literature at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Raphael Lyne is a Fellow of Murray Edwards College and a Reader in Renaissance Literature in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, UK.

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General Editors: Paul Hammond and David Hopkins Founding Editors: F. W. Bateson and John Barnard Other titles available: ROBERT BROWNING: POEMS VOLS 14 and SELECTED POEMS
Edited by John Woolford, Daniel Karlin and Joseph Phelan THE COMPLETE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE
Edited by Robin Robbins DRYDEN: POEMS VOLS 15 and SELECTED POEMS
Edited by Paul Hammond and David Hopkins THE POEMS OF ANDREW MARVELL
(Revised Edition)
Edited by Nigel Smith MILTON: PARADISE LOST
(Second Edition)
Edited by Alastair Fowler MILTON: COMPLETE SHORTER POEMS
(Second Edition)
Edited by John Carey

THE POEMS OF ALEXANDER POPE, VOL. 3: THE DUNCIAD
Edited by Valerie Rumbold THE POEMS OF SHELLEY, VOLS 14
Edited by Michael Rossington, Jack Donovan and Kelvin Everest SPENSER: THE FAIRIE QUEENE
(Revised Second Edition)
Edited by A. C. Hamilton TENNYSON: A SELECTED EDITION
(Revised Edition)
Edited by Christopher Ricks https://www.routledge.com/Longman-Annotated-English-Poets/book-series/LAEP

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The Complete Poems of
Shakespeare

Edited by Cathy Shrank and Raphael Lyne

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First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2018 selection and editorial matter, Cathy Shrank and Raphael Lyne The right of Cathy Shrank and Raphael Lyne to be identified as the authors of the editorial material has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616, author. | Shrank, Cathy, editor. | Lyne, Raphael, editor.

Title: The complete poems of Shakespeare / [edited by] Cathy Shrank and Raphael Lyne.

Description: Abingdon ; New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Longman annotated English poets | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017003335| ISBN 9780415737074 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780582784109 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781317481355 (mobipocket/kindle) | ISBN 9781315707945 (Master) | ISBN 9781317481379 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616Poetic works. | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616Criticism and interpretation.

Classification: LCC PR2841 .S57 2017 | DDC 822.3/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003335

ISBN: 978-0-41573707-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-58278410-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-31570794-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo Std
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

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Contents

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Longman Annotated English Poets was launched in 1965 with the publication of Kenneth Allotts edition of The Poems of Matthew Arnold . F.W. Bateson wrote that the new series is the first designed to provide university students and teachers, and the general reader with complete and fully annotated editions of the major English poets. That remains the aim of the series, and Batesons original vision of its policy remains essentially the same. Its concern is primarily with the meaning of the extant texts in their various contexts. The two other main principles of the series were that the text should be modernised and the poems printed as far as possible in the order in which they were composed.

These broad principles still govern the series. Its primary purpose is to provide an annotated text giving the reader any necessary contextual information. However, flexibility in the detailed application has proved necessary in the light of experience and the needs of a particular case (and each poet is by definition, a particular case).

First, proper glossing of a poets vocabulary has proved essential and not something which can be taken for granted. Second, modernisation has presented difficulties, which have been resolved pragmatically, trying to reach a balance between sensitivity to the text in question and attention to the needs of a modern reader. Thus, to modernise Brownings text has a double redundancy: Victorian conventions are very close to modern conventions, and Browning had firm ideas on punctuation. Equally, to impose modern pointing on the ambiguities of Marvell would create a misleading clarity. Third, in the very early days of the series Bateson hoped that editors would be able in many cases to annotate a textus receptus. That has not always been possible, and where no accepted text exists or where the text is controversial, editors have been obliged to go back to the originals and create their own text. The series has taken, and will continue to take, the opportunity not only of providing thorough annotations not available elsewhere, but also of making important scholarly textual contributions where necessary. A case in point is the edition of The Poems of Tennyson by Christopher Ricks, the second edition of which (1987) takes into account a full collation of the Trinity College Manuscripts, not previously available for an edition of this kind. Yet the series primary purpose remains annotation.

The rationale for the present edition of The Complete Poems of Shakespeare is that as the knowledge, requirements and expectations of readers change from generation to generation, and as scholars make further discoveries, new editions are needed. The text of Shakespeares poems is presented here in a form which sensitively modernises spelling and punctuation, while the annotation pays particular attention to elucidating the complexities of Shakespeares language in particularly rich detail, and to charting connections of thought and phrasing between Shakespeares poetry and the work of his contemporaries. It therefore not only presents Shakespeares work to the modern reader, but also draws that reader into the rich, complex, and sometimes strange habits of thought which characterised the Elizabethan world.