Drawing both on the tenets of classical rhetoric and on contemporary critical theory, Heather Dubrow here offers a bold and persuasive reading of Shakespeare's nondramatic poems. She calls into question prevailing critical views of Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the sonnets and asserts that in these poems Shakespeare uses rhetoric with great subtlety and force to effect characterizations as rich in psychological and moral complexities as those found in the plays.

“Entertainment is the very heartbeat of Sanvar, and we are the blood, and as long as it remains that way, whether we live or die is immaterial.” In the Greco-Roman culture of Sanvar, a tale unfolds that follows the story of two orphans: one incredibly important, the other apparently insignificant. Isla Eliseus is the Iram of Sanvar, and among the most powerful people in the entire empire. Despite the honor and influence of her position, Isla wrestles with a prospect too monstrous to ignore: the exploitation of children, orphaned as she was. Determined to act, Isla agrees to spy for a rebel organization committed to ending the vile practices of the orphanages. Silas Carter's life is wholly different. Raised in obscurity within a state-run orphanage, he was trained to fulfill a single task: to serve Sanvar. Like other orphans, he knows how wrong it is to kill, but has no other choice when he's sent to the regional colosseum as a gladiator, forced to live out his own worst nightmare. Although separated by social class and fortune, Silas and Isla are connected through their past. Spotting each other at a colosseum, they rekindle their friendship, meeting again for the first time since childhood: Isla as Iram, and Silas as gladiator-slave, destined for death. Using her influence in Sanvar and position as spy to the rebellion, Isla promises Silas his freedom, setting in motion a series of terrible and thought-provoking events that promise to change Sanvar forever. "Silas and Isla face internal conflict that will resonate with today’s readers: dealing with hope and betrayal, managing obstacles, facing self-doubt, finding one’s place in the world, and overcoming life circumstances beyond one’s control" - WinterPromise Publishing

This 1999 book examines Shakespeare's engagement with forms of deprivation which threatened domestic security in early modern England.

Echoes of Desire variously invokes and interrogates a number of historicist and feminist premises about Tudor and Stuart literature by examining the connections between the anti-Petrarchan tradition and mainstream Petrarchan poetry. It also addresses some of the broader implications of contemporary critical methodologies. Heather Dubrow offers an alternative to the two predominant models used in previous treatments of Petrarchism: the all-powerful poet and silenced mistress on the one hand and the poet as subservient patron on the other.

Shakespeare Studies is an international volume published every year in hardcover, containing more than three hundred pages of essays and studies by critics from both hemispheres.

A Mirror for Lovers: Shake-speare’s Sonnets as Curious Perspective, by William F. Zak,seeks to identify in Shake-speare’e sonnet sequence the structural and thematic features of the satirical tradition born in Plato’s Symposium. Through this study, Zak traces the power of an idea to endure, re-animate, and enrich itself through time: Plato’s discrimination of the true nature of love in The Symposium. Born anew in its medieval reincarnations (The Romance of the Rose, The Vita Nuova, and The Canzoniere of Petrarch), the tradition begun in Plato’s Symposium was then resuscitated in the Elizabethan sonnet sequence revival, most notably in Shake-speare’s Sonnets. With extended examination of all the texts in the Q manuscript, A Mirror for Lovers makes a case for the mutually illuminating relationship among the sonnets to the fair young man and the dark lady, “A Lover’s Complaint,” and the mysterious dedication that until now have never received attention as an integral symbolic matrix of meaning.

Tracing the development of narrative verse in London's literary circles during the 1590s, this volume puts Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece into conversation with poems by a wide variety of contemporary writers, including Thomas Lodge, Francis Beaumont, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Campion and Edmund Spenser. Chapters investigate the complexities of this literary conversation and contribute for the current, vigorous reassessment of humanism's intended consequences by drawing attention to the highly diverse forms of early modern classicism as well as the complex connection between Latin pedagogy and vernacular poetic invention. Key themes and topics include: -Epyllia, masculinity and sexuality -Classicism and commerce -Genre and mimesis -Rhetoric and aesthetics