Poems: Third Series

Description

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.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English dramatist, poet, and actor, generally regarded as the greatest playwright of all time. Henry Woudhuysen is Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, UK. Katherine Duncan-Jones was Professor of Early Modern English at Somerville College, University of Oxford, UK. Publications include Shakespeare's Sonnets (The Arden Shakespeare, 1997) and the critically acclaimed biography Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life (The Arden Shakespeare, 2010).

Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen are winning advocates for the poems' verbal attractiveness, formal sophistication, and intellectual dexterity. * The New Criterion * Shakespeare scholars will be indebted to the editors not only for fine textual and editorial work but also for a number of astute interpretations. * Project Muse (2009) * The most insightful, thorough and authoritive account of Shakespeare's great narrative poems that you can imagine. * Gregory Doran, Associate Director, Royal Shakespeare Company * My students find the Arden editions very helpful when approaching Shakespeare, especially the less known texts. This edition of the poems is made wonderully accessible through the intro, appendix and notes. * Maria Fleischhack, Leipzig University, Germany *