All the Love Poems of Shakespeare

by William Shakespeare

This is the first paperback reprint of the beautiful Sylvan Press edition of Shakespeare's love poems. First published in 1947, the Sylvan Press edition was printed in a limited edition and was allowed to go out of print when all copies were sold out. The distinguished English sculptor and engraver Eric Gill designed the format and also contributed the attractive decorations that appear in this edition.

The volume includes the complete "Venus and Adonis" as well as "The Passionate Pilgrim," "A Lover's Complaint" and all the sonnets.

Genres: Poetry, Shakespeare, Classics

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 2015

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shakespeare always made much more sense to me when read aloud. They're all lovely sonnets, even though I seem to be missing the subtleties of them, as is always the case.

The performances themselves are wonderful. They're so varied, especially since the readers really perform them - the actors are expressive, while the singers actually perform the poems as songs.

[Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shakespeare always made much more sense to me when read aloud -- and even more so when set to music, or with the meter and tone set by a professional! This collection features immediately striking prose and still-confusing-after-listening-to-five-times webs at once, and features all of the reasons that I love audio books! Reccomeded for a change of pace.

[Michelle Kampmeier · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting to listen to. Shakespeare's work sounds wonderful but it's damned hard to understand sometimes to me. It was fun listening to celebrities in their British accents reading his work. Fun stuff. I skipped the songs though. They were a little hokey.