Introduction As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagorus:so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous hony-tongued Shakespeare,witnes his Venus and Adonis,his Lucrece,his sugred Sonnets among his private friends,&c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines:so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage;for Comedy,witnes his Gentlemen of Verona,his Errors,his Loves labors lost,his Loves labours wonne,his Midsummers night dreame his Merchant of Venice:for Tragedy his Richard the 2.Richard the 3.Henry the 4.King John,Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet. (Riverside,p.I,970) Meres identifies Shakespeare by the measure of his verse:he is an Ovidian author of poems and plays writing in a 'mellifluous hony-tongued'style that expresses the contents of a 'sweete wittie soule'. Yet the 1623 First Folio,the primary edition to print Shakespeare's plays for posterity,did not print any of his poems.6 The effect of this editorial decision on the history of Shakespeare scholarship cannot be overestimated. In 1640,the printer John Benson tried to mend the lapse,and published a slender,octavo edition titled Poems:Written By Wil.Shake-speare.Gent. Modelled on the scheme of the First Folio,Benson aimed to give the poems the due accommodation of proportionable glory,with the rest of his ever- living Works'.7 Yet Benson's noble enterprise largely failed:he did not include Venus or Lucrece;he reorganized the Sonnets;and he included poems by other poets.As a result,the ensuing centuries carried forward a dramatic'Shakespeare. Indeed,between the late seventeenth century and the early part of the twentieth,commentators largely forgot the poems and fixed instead on what John Dryden called in 1668 the playwright's Dramatick Poesy'.'s That is, they turned Shakespeare's theatre into poems,and admired the dramatic author as a poet.In L'Allegro,John Milton set the pace for the ensuing conversation when he spoke of 'sweetest Shakespeare,fancy's child', 'Warbl[ing]...his native Wood-notes wild'.During the Augustan, Romantic,and Victorian eras,a fancifully poetic Shakespeare of dramatic plays became the classificatory norm. During the later part of the twentieth century,two major developments occurred.First,most dominantly,scholars recovered the theatrical and performative dynamics of Shakespeare's plays from a literary or poetic dynamic.In the 1986 words of Harry Levin,Our century...has restored our perception of him to his genre,the drama,enhanced by increasing historical knowledge alongside the live tradition of the performing arts' For many in the field today,the centrepiece has become the 1986 Oxford 7
As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagorus: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loves labors lost, his Loves labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame & his Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry the 4. King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet. (Riverside, p. 1, 970) Meres identifies Shakespeare by the measure of his verse: he is an Ovidian author of poems and plays writing in a ‘mellifluous & hony-tongued’ style that expresses the contents of a ‘sweete wittie soule’. Yet the 1623 First Folio, the primary edition to print Shakespeare’s plays for posterity, did not print any of his poems.16 The effect of this editorial decision on the history of Shakespeare scholarship cannot be overestimated. In 1640, the printer John Benson tried to mend the lapse, and published a slender, octavo edition titled Poems: Written By Wil. Shake-speare. Gent. Modelled on the scheme of the First Folio, Benson aimed to give the poems ‘the due accommodation of proportionable glory, with the rest of his everliving Works’.17 Yet Benson’s noble enterprise largely failed: he did not include Venus or Lucrece; he reorganized the Sonnets; and he included poems by other poets. As a result, the ensuing centuries carried forward a ‘dramatic’ Shakespeare. Indeed, between the late seventeenth century and the early part of the twentieth, commentators largely forgot the poems and fixed instead on what John Dryden called in 1668 the playwright’s ‘Dramatick Poesy’.18 That is, they turned Shakespeare’s theatre into poems, and admired the dramatic author as a poet. In L’Allegro, John Milton set the pace for the ensuing conversation when he spoke of ‘sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child’, ‘Warbl[ing] ... his native Wood-notes wild’.19 During the Augustan, Romantic, and Victorian eras, a fancifully poetic Shakespeare of dramatic plays became the classificatory norm.20 During the later part of the twentieth century, two major developments occurred. First, most dominantly, scholars recovered the theatrical and performative dynamics of Shakespeare’s plays from a literary or poetic dynamic. In the 1986 words of Harry Levin, ‘Our century ... has restored our perception of him to his genre, the drama, enhanced by increasing historical knowledge alongside the live tradition of the performing arts’.21 For many in the field today, the centrepiece has become the 1986 Oxford Introduction 7
PATRICK CHENEY Shakespeare,which presents Shakespeare as 'supremely,a man of the thea- tre',and edits his texts as they might have been originally performed:'It is in performance that the plays lived and had their being.Performance is the end to which they were created'.In 1997,the Norton Shakespeare:Based on the Oxford Edition institutionalized this theatrical 'Shakespeare'for the American academy:he is a 'working dramatist'.=3 Second,during the closing years of the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first,scholars began a backlash movement that aims to recover Shakespeare's considerable achievement in the art of poetry.During the past few years,Shakespeare studies has indeed entered a new phase of criticism,producing a large number of monographs,editions,collections of essays,and even international conferences devoted to the poems.The centre- piece here has become Colin Burrow's Complete Sonnets and Poems from Oxford World's Classics(2002)-surprisingly,the first edition since the late nineteenth century to print the full corpus of Shakespeare's poems in a single volume:'Shakespeare's career as a poet is likely to have jolted along in fits and starts during periods of enforced idleness..;but the periods of idleness enabled the emergence of something which looks like an oeuvre,with a distinctive set of preoccupations'(p.5). Among this body of work are too many essays to mention here(see the Reading list at the end of this Introduction for a selection,and the note on reference works on pages 281-6),but one essay deserves special mention:Burrow's 1998 Chatterton Lecture on Poetry,'Life and Work in Shakespeare's Poems'.Burrow's essay supports his edition by solidifying a new non-dramatic'phase of Shakespeare criticism,which aims to 'give strong grounds for putting the poems at the front of our thinking about Shakespeare,and perhaps even at the front of collected editions of his works...[Wel also should...ask why we do not think of Shakespeare as primarily a non-dramatic poet'(p.I7).The corpus of five major Shakespeare poems may be limited in number by comparison with the plays,but the recent surge of scholarship and criticism on this compelling corpus urges students of Shakespeare to see this author's poetic achievement as monu- mental in its own right,and then to set the poems alongside the plays.Indeed, only by conjoining Shakespeare's poems with his plays can we accurately gauge his full achievement.While other companions emphasize the plays, this companion foregrounds the poems in conjunction with the plays,even as it allows the historical accomplishment of the poems to emerge. Hence,during the past few years scholars have drawn attention to the excellence and widespread importance of the non-dramatic part of Shakespeare's corpus.G.Blakemore Evans reminds us that the Sonnets have become Shakespeare's all-time best-seller (Sonnets,p.I),and not 8
Shakespeare, which presents Shakespeare as ‘supremely, a man of the theatre’, and edits his texts as they might have been originally performed: ‘It is in performance that the plays lived and had their being. Performance is the end to which they were created’.22 In 1997, the Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition institutionalized this theatrical ‘Shakespeare’ for the American academy: he is a ‘working dramatist’.23 Second, during the closing years of the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first, scholars began a backlash movement that aims to recover Shakespeare’s considerable achievement in the art of poetry. During the past few years, Shakespeare studies has indeed entered a new phase of criticism, producing a large number of monographs, editions, collections of essays, and even international conferences devoted to the poems. The centrepiece here has become Colin Burrow’s Complete Sonnets and Poems from Oxford World’s Classics (2002) – surprisingly, the first edition since the late nineteenth century to print the full corpus of Shakespeare’s poems in a single volume: ‘Shakespeare’s career as a poet is likely to have jolted along in fits and starts during periods of enforced idleness ...; but the periods of idleness enabled the emergence of something which looks like an oeuvre, with a distinctive set of preoccupations’ (p. 5).24 Among this body of work are too many essays to mention here (see the Reading list at the end of this Introduction for a selection, and the note on reference works on pages 281–6), but one essay deserves special mention: Burrow’s 1998 Chatterton Lecture on Poetry, ‘Life and Work in Shakespeare’s Poems’. Burrow’s essay supports his edition by solidifying a new ‘non-dramatic’ phase of Shakespeare criticism, which aims to ‘give strong grounds for putting the poems at the front of our thinking about Shakespeare, and perhaps even at the front of collected editions of his works ... [We] also should ... ask why we do not think of Shakespeare as primarily a non-dramatic poet’ (p. 17). The corpus of five major Shakespeare poems may be limited in number by comparison with the plays, but the recent surge of scholarship and criticism on this compelling corpus urges students of Shakespeare to see this author’s poetic achievement as monumental in its own right, and then to set the poems alongside the plays. Indeed, only by conjoining Shakespeare’s poems with his plays can we accurately gauge his full achievement. While other companions emphasize the plays, this companion foregrounds the poems in conjunction with the plays, even as it allows the historical accomplishment of the poems to emerge. Hence, during the past few years scholars have drawn attention to the excellence and widespread importance of the non-dramatic part of Shakespeare’s corpus. G. Blakemore Evans reminds us that the Sonnets have become Shakespeare’s all-time best-seller (Sonnets, p. 1), and not PATRICK CHENEY 8
Introduction surprisingly more books have been written on the Sonnets than on any of the plays,except perhaps Hamlet.Northrop Frye helps us understand why:'Shakespeare's sonnets are the definitive summing up of the Western tradition of love poetry from Plato and Ovid,to Dante and Petrarch,to Chaucer and Spenser.'Similarly,Jonathan Crewe calls Lucrece 'one of the most exhaustively discussed poems in the English language,6 while those familiar with the voluminous criticism on Venus might speculate that the first heir of Shakespeare's invention couldn't be too far behind.Early in the last century,John Middleton Murray voiced a longstanding sentiment on The Phoenix and Turtle',shared by commentators from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Barbara Everett:this philosophical lyric is 'the most perfect short poem in any language'.27 I.A.Richards was more circumspect: "The Phoenix and Turtle'is 'the most mysterious poem in English'.8 The recent work of John Kerrigan and Katherine Duncan-Jones on A Lover's Complaint confirms an anonymous yet shrewd nineteenth-century judge- ment:it is 'one of the most successful pastorals in the English language' Kerrigan calls A Lover's Complaint simply Shakespeare's'most intricate long poem'(Kerrigan,p.65),while Duncan-Jones adds that 'this short poem offers dizzyingly complex layers of reported speech'.3 Finally,recent work on copyright and intellectual property has brought the 'pirating' problem of Jaggard's The Passionate Pilgrim back into the critical conver- sation.3Thus,Margreta de Grazia supplies a rationale for taking seriously Jaggard's enterprise in The Passionate Pilgrim:With the 1623 First Folio and the 1599 and 1612 editions of The Passionate Pilgrim,William Jaggard had printed the first collections of both Shakespeare's plays and his poems'.32 In addition to writing authentic dramatic verse for his plays and compos- ing freestanding poems,Shakespeare probably produced a small body of occasional verse.Recently,scholars have attributed some new poems to the Shakespeare corpus.These include Shall I die',a ninety-line manuscript song argued by Gary Taylor to be an authentic Shakespeare composition,yet not fully accredited by the Shakespeare community;and A Funeral Elegy,a 578-line poem published in 1612 as a funeral celebration of William Peter, but no longer believed to be by Shakespeare.For these reasons,the present companion will not include discussion of either poem.33 We cannot even be certain that all of the other occasional poems some- times assigned to Shakespeare are authentic.These short poems range in length from two lines to eight and appear in various poetic metres,some of them in the form of the funeral elegy:'Upon a pair of gloves that master sent to his mistress';two 'Verses upon the Stanley Tomb at Tong';On Ben Jonson';'An Epitaph on Elias James',a London brewer whom Shakespeare 9
surprisingly more books have been written on the Sonnets than on any of the plays, except perhaps Hamlet. Northrop Frye helps us understand why: ‘Shakespeare’s sonnets are the definitive summing up of the Western tradition of love poetry from Plato and Ovid, to Dante and Petrarch, to Chaucer and Spenser.’25 Similarly, Jonathan Crewe calls Lucrece ‘one of the most exhaustively discussed poems in the English language’,26 while those familiar with the voluminous criticism on Venus might speculate that the first heir of Shakespeare’s invention couldn’t be too far behind. Early in the last century, John Middleton Murray voiced a longstanding sentiment on ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’, shared by commentators from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Barbara Everett: this philosophical lyric is ‘the most perfect short poem in any language’.27 I. A. Richards was more circumspect: ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ is ‘the most mysterious poem in English’.28 The recent work of John Kerrigan and Katherine Duncan-Jones on A Lover’s Complaint confirms an anonymous yet shrewd nineteenth-century judgement: it is ‘one of the most successful pastorals in the English language’.29 Kerrigan calls A Lover’s Complaint simply Shakespeare’s ‘most intricate long poem’ (Kerrigan, p. 65), while Duncan-Jones adds that ‘this short poem offers dizzyingly complex layers of reported speech’.30 Finally, recent work on copyright and intellectual property has brought the ‘pirating’ problem of Jaggard’s The Passionate Pilgrim back into the critical conversation.31 Thus, Margreta de Grazia supplies a rationale for taking seriously Jaggard’s enterprise in The Passionate Pilgrim: ‘With the 1623 First Folio and the 1599 and 1612 editions of The Passionate Pilgrim, William Jaggard had printed the first collections of both Shakespeare’s plays and his poems’.32 In addition to writing authentic dramatic verse for his plays and composing freestanding poems, Shakespeare probably produced a small body of occasional verse. Recently, scholars have attributed some new poems to the Shakespeare corpus. These include ‘Shall I die’, a ninety-line manuscript song argued by Gary Taylor to be an authentic Shakespeare composition, yet not fully accredited by the Shakespeare community; and A Funeral Elegy, a 578-line poem published in 1612 as a funeral celebration of William Peter, but no longer believed to be by Shakespeare. For these reasons, the present companion will not include discussion of either poem.33 We cannot even be certain that all of the other occasional poems sometimes assigned to Shakespeare are authentic. These short poems range in length from two lines to eight and appear in various poetic metres, some of them in the form of the funeral elegy: ‘Upon a pair of gloves that master sent to his mistress’; two ‘Verses upon the Stanley Tomb at Tong’; ‘On Ben Jonson’; ‘An Epitaph on Elias James’, a London brewer whom Shakespeare Introduction 9
PATRICK CHENEY knew;two epitaphs on the wealthy Stratford bachelor and usurer John Combe;and 'Upon the King'(James I).34 Yet Shakespeare likely did pen an 'Epitaph on Himself(Complete Sonnets and Poems,p.147),inscribed on his gravestone at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.This primitive-sounding apotropaic warning compels visitors even today to view "William Shakespeare'through a wry 'everliving' lens,the poetic form of the epitaph itself: Good friend,for Jesus'sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones. (rpt Complete Sonnets and Poems,p.728) NOTES I Smith,'Introduction:Some Presuppositions',PMLA I2o (2o05),9-I5:p.9. Cf.George T.Wright,Shakespeare's Metrical Art (Berkeley:University of California Press,1988):'Poetry is language composed in verse,that is,language of which an essential feature is its appearance in measured units,either as written text or in oral performance'(p.ix).All quotations from Shakespeare's poems and plays come from Cambridge editions,unless otherwise noted,when they will come from either the Riverside Shakespeare,ed.G.Blakemore Evans,et al. (Boston:Houghton,1997),cited as Riverside,or The Complete Sonnets and Poems,ed.Colin Burrow,Oxford World's Classics(Oxford University Press, 2002). 2 Bloom,Shakespeare:The Invention of the Human (New York:Riverhead-Penguin Putnam,1998),p.xviii.Bloom also singles out Shakespeare's prose as a historic invention. 3 These statistics come from Russ McDonald,The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare:An Introduction with Documents,2nd edn (New York:St Martin's Press,200I),pp.77-8. 4 Conveniently collected in Shakespeare's Songs and Poems,ed.Edward Hubler (New York:McGraw Hill,1959). 5 Stephen Greenblatt,Will in the World:How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York:Norton,2004),p.I2. 6 Katherine Duncan-Jones,'Was the 1609 Shake-speares Sonnets Really Unauthorized?',Review of English Studies 34 (1983),I5I-71.See also Chapters 7 and 8 in this volume. 7 On print culture,see Chapter 3 in this volume;Arthur F.Marotti,Manuscript, Print,and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca:Cornell University Press,1995); and Wendy Wall,The Imprint of Gender:Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance(Ithaca:Cornell University Press,1993). 8 On Spenser as England's'first laureate poet',see Richard Helgerson,Self-Crowned Laureates:Spenser,Jonson,Milton,and the Literary System(Berkeley:University of California Press,1983),esp.p.Ioo
knew; two epitaphs on the wealthy Stratford bachelor and usurer John Combe; and ‘Upon the King’ (James I).34 Yet Shakespeare likely did pen an ‘Epitaph on Himself’ (Complete Sonnets and Poems, p. 147), inscribed on his gravestone at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. This primitive-sounding apotropaic warning compels visitors even today to view ‘William Shakespeare’ through a wry ‘everliving’ lens, the poetic form of the epitaph itself: Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones. (rpt Complete Sonnets and Poems, p. 728) NOTES 1 Smith, ‘Introduction: Some Presuppositions’, PMLA 120 (2005), 9–15: p. 9. Cf. George T. Wright, Shakespeare’s Metrical Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): ‘Poetry is language composed in verse, that is, language of which an essential feature is its appearance in measured units, either as written text or in oral performance’ (p. ix). All quotations from Shakespeare’s poems and plays come from Cambridge editions, unless otherwise noted, when they will come from either the Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, et al. (Boston: Houghton, 1997), cited as Riverside, or The Complete Sonnets and Poems, ed. Colin Burrow, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press, 2002). 2 Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead-Penguin Putnam, 1998), p. xviii. Bloom also singles out Shakespeare’s prose as a historic invention. 3 These statistics come from Russ McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents, 2nd edn (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2001), pp. 77–8. 4 Conveniently collected in Shakespeare’s Songs and Poems, ed. Edward Hubler (New York: McGraw Hill, 1959). 5 Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York: Norton, 2004), p. 12. 6 Katherine Duncan-Jones, ‘Was the 1609 Shake-speares Sonnets Really Unauthorized?’, Review of English Studies 34 (1983), 151–71. See also Chapters 7 and 8 in this volume. 7 On print culture, see Chapter 3 in this volume; Arthur F. Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); and Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). 8 On Spenser as England’s ‘first laureate poet’, see Richard Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton, and the Literary System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), esp. p. 100. PATRICK CHENEY 10
Introduction 9 See Andrew Gurr,Playgoing in Shakespeare's London,2nd edn (Cambridge University Press,1996),pp.Io-16. Io As Wright recalls,'Throughout the fifteenth century and most of the sixteenth, English drama...was mainly written in rhyming forms'(Shakespeare's Metrical Art,p.95).See also Chapters I and 2 in this volume. II Cheney,Shakespeare,National Poet-Playwright(Cambridge University Press, 2004),p.207. 12 Peters,The Theatre of the Book,1480-1880:Print,Text,and Performance in Europe (Oxford University Press,2o00),pp.I-8. I3 Erne,Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge University Press,2003), Pp.25-6. I4 For a complementary history,see Chapter 14 in this volume. I5 Smith,'Introduction',esp.pp.9-12;Edmund Bolton,in The Shakspere Allusion- Book:A Collection of Allusions to Shakspere from 159I to 1700,ed. C.M.Ingleby,L.Toulmin Smith,and F.J.Furnivall;rev.edn John Munro; preface Edmund Chambers,2 vols.(1909;Freeport,NY:Books for Libraries P, I97o,1:2I3. 16 We do not know why,but Burrow speculates that it was due to copyright problems with Venus and Lucrece,still popular in 1623 (Complete Sonnets and Poems,p.8).For scepticism about this view,see Cheney,Shakespeare,National Poet-Playwright,pp.67-9. I7 Benson,Poems(London,1640),sig.*2.See Chapter 6 in this volume. 18 Dryden,rpt in Shakespeare:The Critical Heritage,ed.Brian Vickers,6 vols. (London:Routledge Kegal Paul,1974-81),I:136. I9 Milton,L'Allegro 134-5,in John Milton:Complete Poems and Major Prose,ed. Merritt Y.Hughes(Indianapolis:Odyssey,1957). 2o Harry Levin,'Critical Approaches to Shakespeare from 1660-1904',in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies,ed.Stanley Wells (Cambridge University Press,1986),pp.213-29. 2I Levin,'Critical Approaches',p.228. 22 Oxford Shakespeare,ed.Stanley Wells,Gary Taylor,John Jowett,and William Montgomery (Oxford University Press,I986),pp.xxxvi and xxxviii. 23 Norton Shakespeare,ed.Stephen Greenblatt,et al.(New York:Norton,1997), p.I. 24 The Arden,Cambridge,Penguin,Pelican,and Folger editions all print the Sonnets in a volume separate from the other poems. 25 Frye,How True a Twain',in Fables of Identity:Studies in Poetic Mythology (New York:Harcourt-Harbinger,1963),pp.88-106:p.Io6. 26 Crewe(ed.),Narrative Poems(New York:Penguin,1999),p.xli. 27 Rpt in A New Variorum Shakespeare:The Poems,ed.Hyder E.Rollins (Philadelphia:J.B.Lippincott,1938),p.565.For a review of commentary from Emerson to Everett,see Cheney,Shakespeare,National Poet-Playwright, Pp.I73-83. 28 Richards,Poetries:Their Media and Ends,ed.Trevor Eaton (The Hague: Mouton,1974),p.50. 29 Rpt in A New Variorum Shakespeare,ed.Rollins,p.586. 3o Katherine Duncan-Jones (ed.),The Sonnets and 'A Lover's Complaint',Arden 3rd series (London:Thomas Nelson,1999),p.92. II
9 See Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 10–16. 10 As Wright recalls, ‘Throughout the fifteenth century and most of the sixteenth, English drama ... was mainly written in rhyming forms’ (Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, p. 95). See also Chapters 1 and 2 in this volume. 11 Cheney, Shakespeare, National Poet–Playwright (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 207. 12 Peters, The Theatre of the Book, 1480–1880: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 1–8. 13 Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 25–6. 14 For a complementary history, see Chapter 14 in this volume. 15 Smith, ‘Introduction’, esp. pp. 9–12; Edmund Bolton, in The Shakspere AllusionBook: A Collection of Allusions to Shakspere from 1591 to 1700, ed. C. M. Ingleby, L. Toulmin Smith, and F. J. Furnivall; rev. edn John Munro; preface Edmund Chambers, 2 vols. (1909; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries P, 1970), I: 213. 16 We do not know why, but Burrow speculates that it was due to copyright problems with Venus and Lucrece, still popular in 1623 (Complete Sonnets and Poems, p. 8). For scepticism about this view, see Cheney, Shakespeare, National Poet–Playwright, pp. 67–9. 17 Benson, Poems (London, 1640), sig. *2r . See Chapter 6 in this volume. 18 Dryden, rpt in Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, ed. Brian Vickers, 6 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegal Paul, 1974–81), I: 136. 19 Milton, L’Allegro 134–5, in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: Odyssey, 1957). 20 Harry Levin, ‘Critical Approaches to Shakespeare from 1660–1904’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Stanley Wells (Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 213–29. 21 Levin, ‘Critical Approaches’, p. 228. 22 Oxford Shakespeare, ed. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett, and William Montgomery (Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. xxxvi and xxxviii. 23 Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. (New York: Norton, 1997), p. 1. 24 The Arden, Cambridge, Penguin, Pelican, and Folger editions all print the Sonnets in a volume separate from the other poems. 25 Frye, ‘How True a Twain’, in Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology (New York: Harcourt-Harbinger, 1963), pp. 88–106: p. 106. 26 Crewe (ed.), Narrative Poems (New York: Penguin, 1999), p. xli. 27 Rpt in A New Variorum Shakespeare: The Poems, ed. Hyder E. Rollins (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1938), p. 565. For a review of commentary from Emerson to Everett, see Cheney, Shakespeare, National Poet–Playwright, pp. 173–83. 28 Richards, Poetries: Their Media and Ends, ed. Trevor Eaton (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), p. 50. 29 Rpt in A New Variorum Shakespeare, ed. Rollins, p. 586. 30 Katherine Duncan-Jones (ed.), The Sonnets and ‘A Lover’s Complaint’, Arden 3rd series (London: Thomas Nelson, 1999), p. 92. Introduction 11