Sonnets and Other Poems

Shakespeare became famous as a dazzling poet before most people even knew that he wrote plays. His sonnets are the English language’s most extraordinary anatomy of love in all its dimensions—desire and despair, longing and loss, adoration and disgust. To read them is to confront morality and eternity in the same breath.

Produced under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, The Sonnets and Other Poems includes all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the long narrative poems “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece,” and several other shorter works.

Incorporating definitive texts and authoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works, this unique volume also includes an expanded Introduction by Jonathan Bate that places the poems in literary and historical context and illuminates their relationship to Shakespeare’s dramatic writing. Also featured are key facts about the individual selections; an index of the first lines of the sonnets; a chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and recommendations for further reading.

Ideal for students and general readers alike, this modern and accessible edition sets a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

From the Trade Paperback edition.