An original account of the reception and influence of Shakespeare's Sonnets in his own time and in later literary history.

Analyzes all of Shakespeare's sonnets in terms of their poetic structure, semantics, and use of sounds and images.

David Schalkwyk offers a sustained reading of Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to his plays. He argues that the la nguage of the sonnets is primarily performative rather than descriptive. In a wide-ranging analysis of both the 1609 quarto of Shakespeare's sonnets and the Petrarchan discourses in a selection of plays, Schalkwyk addresses such issues as embodiment and silencing, interiority and theatricality, inequalities of power, status, gender and desire, both in the published poems and on the stage and in the context of the early modern period.

Shakespeare's sonnets rank among his best works, and are regarded as some of the finest love poetry in the English language. This volume contains the complete text of all 154 sonnets in a large, oversized edition (8"x10"), and has a corresponding image for each poem. Each image has been carefully selected to correspond to the sonnet, and features art by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Gustav Klimt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Johannes Vermeer, Michelangelo, Paul Cezanne, Leonardo da Vinci, Camille Pissarro, Henri Matisse, Albrecht Durer, Odilon Redon, Ansel Adams, James Whistler, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Dore, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Gaugin, N.C. Wyeth, Francisco Goya, Aubrey Beardsley, Alfons Mucha, William Hogarth, and many, many more. The perfect gift for art and poetry lovers alike.

This book discusses the possibility of a homoerotic interpretation of Shakespeare's sonnets. It gives minute attention to the text as well as to the extensive scholarship which has generally resisted such an interpretation.