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  • Published: 1 May 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099518860
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $26.00

Sonnets




Shakespeare's complete sonnets in one beautiful edition

INTRODUCTION BY GERMAINE GREER

Shakespeare's sonnets are lyrical, haunting, beautiful and often breath-taking, representing one of the finest bodies of poetry ever penned. They demonstrate the writer's skill in capturing the full range of human emotions within a carefully prescribed form and creating something unique in every one. Some are familiar - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? - others unexpected, but together they form an extraordinary meditation on the nature of love, lust, beauty and time.

  • Published: 1 May 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099518860
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, and was baptised on 26 April 1564. His father was a glove maker and wool merchant and his mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a well-to-do local land owner. Shakespeare was probably educated in Stratford’s grammar school. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had a daughter the following year and twins in 1585.

Shakespeare’s theatrical life seems to have commenced around 1590. We do know that he was part of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, which was renamed the King’s Company in 1603 when James I succeeded to the throne. The Company acquired interests in two theatres in the Southwark area of London, near the banks of the Thames - the Globe and the Blackfriars.

Shakespeare’s poetry was published before his plays, with two poems appearing in 1593 and 1594, dedicated to his patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Most of Shakespeare’s sonnets were probably written at this time as well.

Records of Shakespeare’s plays begin to appear in 1594, and he produced roughly two a year until around 1611. His earliest plays include Henry VI and Titus Andronicus. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Richard II all date from the mid to late 1590s. Some of his most famous tragedies were written in the early 1600s; these include Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony & Cleopatra. His late plays, often known as the Romances, date from 1608 onwards and include The Tempest.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. The first collected edition of his works was published in 1623 and is known as ‘the First Folio’.

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Praise for Sonnets

The great master who knew everything...an unspeakable source of delight

Charles Dickens

Every age has reinvented the Bard in its own image. Renaissance Man or post-modern angst... Shakespeare haunts our language

Independent

Shakespeare was the most consummate genius of all time

Peter Ackroyd

Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them, there is no third

T.S. Eliot

Every single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as those in Life itself

Alexander Pope

Shakespeare is the best thing that ever happened to this country

Roy Hattersley

The great master who knew everything...an unspeakable source of delight

Charles Dickens

Every age has reinvented the Bard in its own image. Renaissance Man or post-modern angst... Shakespeare haunts our language

Independent

Every single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as those in Life itself

Alexander Pope

Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them, there is no third

T.S. Eliot

Shakespeare is the best thing that ever happened to this country

Roy Hattersley

Shakespeare was the most consummate genius of all time

Peter Ackroyd