William Shakespeare - The Sonnets

THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE

GENERAL EDITOR

Brian Gibbons

ASSOCIATE GENERAL EDITOR

A. R. Braunmuller, University of California, Los Angeles

From the publication of the first volumes in 1984 the General Editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare was Philip Brockbank and the Associate General Editors were Brian Gibbons and Robin Hood. From 1990 to 1994 the General Editor was Brian Gibbons and the Associate General Editors were A. R. Braunmuller and Robin Hood.

THE SONNETS

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 new edition, Stephen Orgel offers a warmly personal and original introduction to Shakespeares best-loved and most widely read poems. Careful readings emphasise their sexual and temperamental ambiguity, their textual history and the special perils an editor faces when modernising the original quartos 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.

THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE

Alls Well That Ends Well, edited by Russell Fraser

Antony and Cleopatra, edited by David Bevington

As You Like It, edited by Michael Hattaway

The Comedy of Errors, edited by T. S. Dorsch

Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss

Cymbeline, edited by Martin Butler

Hamlet, edited by Philip Edwards

Julius Caesar, edited by Marvin Spevack

King Edward III, edited by Giorgio Melchiori

The First Part of King Henry IV, edited by Herbert Weil and Judith Weil

The Second Part of King Henry IV, edited by Giorgio Melchiori

King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr

The First Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway

The Second Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway

The Third Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway

King Henry VIII, edited by John Margeson

King John, edited by L. A. Beaurline

The Tragedy of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio

King Richard II, edited by Andrew Gurr

King Richard III, edited by Janis Lull

Loves Labours Lost, edited by William C. Carroll

Macbeth, edited by A. R. Braunmuller

Measure for Measure, edited by Brian Gibbons

The Merchant of Venice, edited by M. M. Mahood

The Merry Wives of Windsor, edited by David Crane

A Midsummer Nights Dream, edited by R. A. Foakes

Much Ado About Nothing, edited by F. H. Mares

Othello, edited by Norman Sanders

Pericles, edited by Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond

The Poems, edited by John Roe

Romeo and Juliet, edited by G. Blakemore Evans

The Sonnets, edited by G. Blakemore Evans

The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Ann Thompson

The Tempest, edited by David Lindley

Timon of Athens, edited by Karl Klein

Titus Andronicus, edited by Alan Hughes

Troilus and Cressida, edited by Anthony B. Dawson

Twelfth Night, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, edited by Kurt Schlueter

The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Robert Kean Turner and Patricia Tatspaugh

The Winters Tale, edited by Susan Snyder and Deborah T. Curren-Aquino

THE EARLY QUARTOS

The First Quarto of Hamlet, edited by Kathleen O. Irace

The First Quarto of King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr

The First Quarto of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio

The First Quarto of King Richard III, edited by Peter Davison

The First Quarto of Othello, edited by Scott McMillin

The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet, edited by Lukas Erne

The Taming of a Shrew: The 1594 Quarto, edited by Stephen Roy Miller

THE SONNETS

Updated edition

Edited by

G. BLAKEMORE EVANS

With an Introduction by

STEPHEN ORGEL

Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Humanities, Stanford University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Singapore, So Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521861182

Cambridge University Press, 1996, 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1996

Reprinted 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004

Updated edition 2006

6th printing 2013

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CRO 4YY

ISBN-13 978-0-521-86118-2 Hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-67837-7 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustrations are reproduced by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.

PREFACE

An editor of Shakespeares Sonnets incurs perhaps even larger debts than an editor of one of Shakespeares plays, except possibly Hamlet. Like all more recent scholars, I am most substantially indebted to the New Variorum Sonnets (2 vols., 1944) edited by the late Professor Hyder Edward Rollins, who, with the kind rigour for which he was so affectionately known, guided, by precept and example, my graduate studies many years ago. Scarcely less important, of course, is my debt to the scholarship of the last thirty years, particularly to the editions by W. G. Ingram and Theodore Redpath (1964), Stephen Booth (rev. edn, 1978), and John Kerrigan (1986).

Considerations of space have forced me to treat the work of earlier editors and critics those included in the New Variorum as, in a sense, public property; hence, their work has generally been cited without individual acknowledgement. However, I have tried, wherever possible, to acknowledge the many new critical insights offered by Ingram and Redpath, Booth, and Kerrigan, whose approach to the Sonnets takes fresh and somewhat more analytical directions.

I have been, as usual, particularly fortunate in the generous help I received from old friends and colleagues: special thanks are due to Professor Helen Vendler, who took time out from her own study of the Sonnets to read through my Commentary, correcting my missteps and suggesting incisive and critically sensitive glosses, and to Professors Heather Dubrow, John Klause, and J. J. M. Tobin, who also read several parts of the Commentary and offered sound advice and many helpful suggestions. I am further indebted to the General and Associate Editors of the New Cambridge Shakespeare, Professors Brian Gibbons and A. R. Braunmuller and Mr R. C. Hood, each of whom not only gave me unstinting and valuable criticism but contributed new and perceptive notes of their own, and to Ms Sarah Stanton, Mr Paul Chipchase, and Miss Judith Harte of the Cambridge University Press, who were responsible for seeing the edition through the press, and who (as before) exercised an oft-tried patience in the face of mighty odds. What shortcomings and errors remain all too many, I fear are my responsibility alone.