The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford Shakespeare) [Hardcover]

William Shakespeare (Author), Colin Burrow (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2002 | ISBN-10: 019818431X | ISBN-13: 978-0198184317

Despite the power of Shakespeare's poems, and their foundational place within his oeuvre, modern readers have seldom been encouraged to engage with his non-dramatic works as a whole. This new edition explains how this state of affairs has arisen, and why it needs to be changed. It contains the complete Sonnets and poems with a full commentary. An extensive and lively introduction explores Shakespeare's poetic development, and shows how the poems relate to each other and to his dramatic works. Each work is freshly interpreted, making full use of the latest research. The volume also explores what the poems may have meant to their earliest readers, and, for this reason, it includes poems attributed to Shakespeare in the seventeenth century, as well as those printed under his name in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Colin Burrow has produced an excellent edition of the non-dramatic works... This Poems and Sonnets is of high quality, elegent in physical, as well as intellectual, presentation"--New Studies in the Shakespearean Heroine

"[Burrow is] erudite, critically and philosophically sophisticated, and treat[s] textual issues with the seriousness they require.... [Burrow] has been able to offer, in his book-length introduction, the best study there is of Shakespeare as a poet. Burrow writes wonderfully about the interplay between the various poems and genres.... If the bookshelf had room for only one edition of Shakespeare's poems, Burrow's would be the one."--Stephen Orgel, London Review of Books

"Burrow's introduction is perhaps the best single essay on the sonnets available.... Finally, an edition lives or dies by the commentary to individual lines. In his notes, Burrow's insights into the tension between language and circumstance are brilliantly demonstrated in large and small ways (words, images, punctuation, etc.). In short, 'The Complete Sonnets & Poems' completes the work of many editors in making the case for the centrality of the poems to Shakespeare's legacy, and it makes the poems themselves not only approachable and fascinating but often deeply moving. Even in our modern sense of the word, Burrow's Shakespeare is a great poet."--Christian Science Monitor

"The Sonnets have been very well and thoroughly edited in recent years, and a new edition must work rather hard to justify its existence. This edition manages to do so brilliantly."--Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"Annotated with great knowledge and taste, essential for serious students."--Biblioth�que d'Humanisme et Renaissance

About the Author

Colin Burrow is a University Senior Lecturer and a Fellow and Tutor of Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 762 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019818431X
• ISBN-13: 978-0198184317
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,119,393 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant of some standing in his community. William probably went to the King's New School in Stratford, but he had no university education. In November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( who would die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later under James I, called the King's Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain's Men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the Thames River. Here many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by the most famous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably without his authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgings in London and devoted more and more time to retirement in Stratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempest and Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition of his plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 two members of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, put together the great collection now called the First Folio.

Customer Reviews

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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!, July 7, 2005

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This review is from: The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford Shakespeare) (Paperback)

This is a wonderful edition of Shakespeare's poetry, which has been neglected as the preponderance of attention is devoted to his plays. Colin Burrow is a breath-takingly fine scholar, who modestly and unobtrusively shares his immense learning to greatly enrich our reading of Shakespeare's poetry.