Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages
THE SONNETS
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Volume Editor
Brett Foster
I
BLOOM'S
LITERARY CRITICISM
An imprint of Infobase Publishing
CONTENTS
Series Introduction
ix
Introduction by Harold Bloom
xi
Biography of William Shakespeare
1
Summary of The Sonnets
5
List of Personas in The Sonnets
15
The Speaker
15
The Young Man
17
The Dark Lady.
21
The Rival Poet
25
Three Key Poems from The Sonnets
29
Sonnet 3
29
Sonnet 64
31
Sonnet 116
36
CRITICISM THROUGH THE AGES
41
<%> The Sonnets in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
1598—Francis Meres. From Palladis Tamia, or Wit's Treasury
43
48
1599—William Shakespeare. Versions of sonnets 138 and
144 from William Jaggard's anthology The Passionate Pilgrim
48
1609—Thomas Thorpe. Dedication from Shake-speares Sonnets
49
1640—John Benson. "Epistle to the Reader," from Poems:
Written by Wil. Shakespeare. Gent
50
vi
Contents
*? The Sonnets in the Eighteenth Century
51
1710—Charles Gildon. From "An Essay on the Rise and
Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome, and England" and
"Remarks on the Poems of Shakespear," from Poems. The Works
ofMr. William Shakespear, vol. 7
56
1711—Bernard Lintott. From "Advertisement," from
A Collection of Poems... by Mr. William Shakespeare
58
1790—Edmund Malone. From "Preface" to The Plays
and Poems of William Shakespeare in Ten Volumes
58
1793—George Steevens. From "Advertisement," from The Plays
of William Shakespeare in Fifteen Volumes...,
4th edition
4» The Sonnets in the Nineteenth Century
59
61
1803—Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From Marginalia
68
1817—John Keats. From Letters
69
1821—James Boswell. "Preliminary Remarks," from
The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, vol. 20
70
1827—William Wordsworth. "Scorn not the Sonnet"
71
1833—Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From Table Talk
72
1842—Henry Hallam. From Introduction to the Literature
ofEurope in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries
1872—Edward Dowden. From Shakspere:A Critical Study
73
ofHis Mind and Art
76
1876—Robert Browning. "House"
82
1879—Algernon Charles Swinburne. From A Study
of Shakespeare
84
1879—Sidney Lanier. From Shakspere and His Forerunners
86
1889—Oscar Wilde. "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,"
from Blackwood's Magazine
1899—Samuel Butler. From Shakespeare's
90
Sonnets Reconsidered
4> The Sonnets in the Twentieth Century
1909—Sir Sidney Lee. "Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets,"
from Elizabethan and Other Essays
114
121
129
Contents
vii
1910—George Bernard Shaw. From "Preface" to The Dark
Lady of the Sonnets
147
1926—Robert Graves and Laura Riding. "A Study
in Original Punctuation and Spelling," from A Survey
ofModernist Poetry
159
1935—William Empson. "They That Have Power,"
from Some Versions of Pastoral
1953—G.K. Hunter. "The Dramatic Technique
of Shakespeare's Sonnets," from Essays in Criticism
169
186
1964—WG. Ingram and Theodore Redpath. "A Note
on the Dedication," from Shakespeare's Sonnets
197
1983—Anne Ferry. From "Shakespeare and Sidney,"
from The "Inward" Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney,
Shakespeare, Donne
200
1984—Joel Fineman. "Shakespeare's 'Perjur'd Eye,'"
from Representations
203
1986—Thomas M. Greene. "Anti-Hermeneutics: The Case
of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129," from The Vulnerable Text:
Essays on Renaissance Literature
231
1991—Bruce R. Smith. "The Secret Sharer,"
from Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England:
A Cultural Poetics
245
199-4—Margreta de Grazia. "The Scandal of Shakespeare's
Sonnets," from Shakespeare Survey
262
1997—Helen Vendler. From "Introduction" to The Art
of Shakespeare's Sonnets
281
1998—Jonathan Bate. "Shakespeare's Autobiographical
Poems?" from The Genius of Shakespeare
301
<s> The Sonnets in the Twenty-first Century: A Brief Overview
2004—Patrick Cheney. "'O, let my books be . . . dumb
presagers': poetry and theatre in the Sonnets,"
from Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright
327
330
Bibliography
361
Acknowledgments
377
Index
:
379