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Very Short Introductions #534
Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems: A Very Short Introduction
说到威廉·莎士比亚的诗作,你会想起哪一首诗？是赫赫有名的叙事诗《维纳斯与阿多尼斯》或《鲁克丽丝受辱记》？还是温婉动人的第18首十四行诗--"或许我可用夏日把你来比方"？抑或是令人难忘的短诗《凤凰与斑鸠》？ 一代文豪威廉·莎士比亚给世人留下了丰厚的诗歌遗存,他曾在诗中声言："但我诗章将逃过时间毒手……越千年不朽。"时光流转,诗人逝去,其诗章的炫目光焰却不曾止息,这光焰携着诗人的令名,温暖了一代又一代爱诗者的心灵。
282 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 6, 2019
There are two general camps of Shakespeare scholars: those who see him as a poet who wrote plays for the money, and others who see him as a playwright writing the occasional poem to sharpen his dramatic language. Post’s analysis of the narrative, sonnet and other selected poems (no room for the epitaphs here) finds balance between the two main kinds of interpretations with a playful sense of anonymity in both subject and authorship. Hard to argue that Venus and Adonis or Rape of Lucrece would be by any other hand, what with the dedication, but the uncertainty of by whom and for whom increases with each numbered sonnet. Just like his views on love as a many splintered thing, it is harder to tell how impressed Anne Hathaway would have been to see so many scandalous thoughts appearing in print - perhaps she’s the lover in the Complaint? Anyhow, I can rest assured, away from the centuries-long warring camps, that his Phoenix and Turtle represents how Shakespeare feels about his whole literary career, just one thing after another.
May 5, 2025
Some books in this series take an oblique approach to their subject; others focus on just one aspect of it; many read like a much larger book that has been hacked down indiscriminately to fit the word limit. Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems: A Very Short Introduction does none of these. Post takes us through the narrative poems and sonnets in a clear and orderly manner, describing the circumstances of their composition, analysing their main features, and outlining some of the main critical approaches to them (alhough, for the most part, this takes a back seat to Post's own enthusiastic and enlightening readings and assessments). He goes beyond this only occasionally when he mentions later responses to the poems by other writers, but this is never distracting. The result feels like a book written to order by a writer who understood his brief perfectly: certainly one of the best Very Short Introductions that I have read.
July 10, 2021
This is an excellent short discussion of William Shakespeare's written (as opposed to staged) works: the poems Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, A Lover's Complaint, The Phoenix and Turtle, and his 154 sonnets. As a high school English teacher who has taught several of Shakespeare's plays (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth) in my classroom, I appreciate the added texture this slim book gives to Shakespeare's life, work, and motivations, putting his purely literary work into context with the scripts written to be performed on stage, and into context with the single largest overriding theme in so many of Shakespeare's works: Love in all its kaleidoscopic facets, both positive and negative, ennobling and destructive, physical and metaphysical. In all the volumes I've read in the A Very Short Introduction series, this is one of my favorites.
January 28, 2021
Today, Shakespeare is known as a playwright (who performed every other occupation in the theatrical world,) and while it is true that some of his sonnets are quite well-known and anthologized, few read (or even know of) his narrative poems. That was not always the case, and there was a time when it seemed probable that Shakespeare would become as well know for “The Rape of Lucrece” as for any of his plays. There’s a reason for his poetic work that we can very much relate to today, and that’s that when the Plague was in town, the theaters were closed down. Of course, there is no ironclad distinction between these two career tracks – poet and playwright. All of Shakespeare’s plays contain verse, and a couple of the histories are written entirely in verse (i.e. King John and Richard II.) Of course, muddying the waters are doubts about what works attributed to Shakespeare were actually composed by him.
In this “A Very Short Introduction,” Post offers the reader insight into the historical and cultural context in which these poems exist, offering elaborations that will help the reader to better understand these poems. The book also helps one see the poems in the larger context of Shakespeare’s work and of literature, itself. Chapter one provides an overview of Shakespeare’s career as a poet and contrasts it to his work as a playwright.
Chapter two is about the narrative poem entitled “Venus and Adonis.” This poem shows us the lovelorn goddess, Venus, continually trying to woo Adonis who is, as they say, just not that into her. Post explores the linkage between Shakespeare’s poem and the source material (e.g. Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,”) comparing and contrasting earlier versions of this Greek myth with the Bard's telling. He also dives into the psychology a bit, asking us to consider who is the more sympathetic character. As in other chapters, Post highlights stanzas that he believes provide particular insight into the story.
Chapter three is about Shakespeare’s most well-known narrative poem, “The Rape of Lucrece.” This poem is about the defilement of a Roman noblewoman and the sad ending to which her tragedy plays out. Besides relating the poem to source material and to Shakespeare’s broader work, the author also shows how the story was portrayed in paintings, as well as discussing how pertinent parts of the poem relate to the story in Homer’s “Iliad” (the story of the war and besiegement of Troy by a coalition of Greek states.)
Chapters four and five both explore the sonnets. The first (Ch. 4) provides insight into the form of sonnet employed by Shakespeare and relates it to sonnets, generally. A section is devoted to breaking down one particular sonnet (116,) to deconstruct a typical example. Other sonnets are included in the text to emphasize particular points -- as opposed to offering a generic overview. Chapter five considers themes and points of emphasis that cut across the collection of 154 sonnets. Here we get an explanation of how the “young man” and “dark lady” poems are distinct, but can be seen as part of an interrelated whole. Still other sonnets are printed in full or in part to elucidate the author’s points.
The final chapter (Ch. 6) investigates two works that are widely (but not universally) attributed to Shakespeare that might be considered the Black Sheep of his poetic family. [There is, of course, a connection between these works being atypical of form and / or content and their authorship being challenged.] The first work is “A Lover’s Complaint,” which like “The Rape of Lucrece” tells the tale of a woman used and abandoned, but – in this case – not an aristocratic woman. Its authorship is less in doubt because it was published together with the sonnets while Shakespeare was still alive, and while the content is a bit different the poem is not wildly outside Shakespeare’s body of work. “The Phoenix and Turtle” is a short, highly lyrical, love story that uses lines with three and a half feet (catalectic trochaic tetrameter.) [A metering which appears in Shakespeare’s other work, but not nearly to the extent as pentameter.]
This book contains graphics that mostly consist of artistic takes on the events of the narrative poems along with a couple title page photos. Like the other books in this series, there is both a “references” section and a “recommended reading” section. This edition also has a brief timeline that puts Shakespeare’s career into broader context of Elizabethan literature, and also shows when the poems came out relative to Shakespeare’s plays.
I found this book to be compelling and educational. I had no idea that -- in Shakespeare’s time -- it seemed as likely that he would become well-known for his poetry as that he would for his plays. (Apparently, the plays weren’t collectively published until well after the Bard’s death.) It’s easy to lose informational value from Shakespeare’s work when one lacks a background in history and how language has morphed. Among these “A Very Short Introduction” guides from Oxford University Press, I have found volumes that greatly rounded out my readings of Shakespeare’s works. I’d highly recommend this book if you are planning to read Shakespeare’s poems.
In this “A Very Short Introduction,” Post offers the reader insight into the historical and cultural context in which these poems exist, offering elaborations that will help the reader to better understand these poems. The book also helps one see the poems in the larger context of Shakespeare’s work and of literature, itself. Chapter one provides an overview of Shakespeare’s career as a poet and contrasts it to his work as a playwright.
Chapter two is about the narrative poem entitled “Venus and Adonis.” This poem shows us the lovelorn goddess, Venus, continually trying to woo Adonis who is, as they say, just not that into her. Post explores the linkage between Shakespeare’s poem and the source material (e.g. Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,”) comparing and contrasting earlier versions of this Greek myth with the Bard's telling. He also dives into the psychology a bit, asking us to consider who is the more sympathetic character. As in other chapters, Post highlights stanzas that he believes provide particular insight into the story.
Chapter three is about Shakespeare’s most well-known narrative poem, “The Rape of Lucrece.” This poem is about the defilement of a Roman noblewoman and the sad ending to which her tragedy plays out. Besides relating the poem to source material and to Shakespeare’s broader work, the author also shows how the story was portrayed in paintings, as well as discussing how pertinent parts of the poem relate to the story in Homer’s “Iliad” (the story of the war and besiegement of Troy by a coalition of Greek states.)
Chapters four and five both explore the sonnets. The first (Ch. 4) provides insight into the form of sonnet employed by Shakespeare and relates it to sonnets, generally. A section is devoted to breaking down one particular sonnet (116,) to deconstruct a typical example. Other sonnets are included in the text to emphasize particular points -- as opposed to offering a generic overview. Chapter five considers themes and points of emphasis that cut across the collection of 154 sonnets. Here we get an explanation of how the “young man” and “dark lady” poems are distinct, but can be seen as part of an interrelated whole. Still other sonnets are printed in full or in part to elucidate the author’s points.
The final chapter (Ch. 6) investigates two works that are widely (but not universally) attributed to Shakespeare that might be considered the Black Sheep of his poetic family. [There is, of course, a connection between these works being atypical of form and / or content and their authorship being challenged.] The first work is “A Lover’s Complaint,” which like “The Rape of Lucrece” tells the tale of a woman used and abandoned, but – in this case – not an aristocratic woman. Its authorship is less in doubt because it was published together with the sonnets while Shakespeare was still alive, and while the content is a bit different the poem is not wildly outside Shakespeare’s body of work. “The Phoenix and Turtle” is a short, highly lyrical, love story that uses lines with three and a half feet (catalectic trochaic tetrameter.) [A metering which appears in Shakespeare’s other work, but not nearly to the extent as pentameter.]
This book contains graphics that mostly consist of artistic takes on the events of the narrative poems along with a couple title page photos. Like the other books in this series, there is both a “references” section and a “recommended reading” section. This edition also has a brief timeline that puts Shakespeare’s career into broader context of Elizabethan literature, and also shows when the poems came out relative to Shakespeare’s plays.
I found this book to be compelling and educational. I had no idea that -- in Shakespeare’s time -- it seemed as likely that he would become well-known for his poetry as that he would for his plays. (Apparently, the plays weren’t collectively published until well after the Bard’s death.) It’s easy to lose informational value from Shakespeare’s work when one lacks a background in history and how language has morphed. Among these “A Very Short Introduction” guides from Oxford University Press, I have found volumes that greatly rounded out my readings of Shakespeare’s works. I’d highly recommend this book if you are planning to read Shakespeare’s poems.
March 1, 2026
This book really delivers on its promise; it’s a short introduction to Shakespeare’s sonnets and poems. However, as someone who loves Shakespeare, my biggest issue with this short book is how boring it is. Post took a subject I am fascinated by, and made it a drudgery to read about. This book is definitely skippable even if you’re new to Shakespeare.
July 26, 2021
While I didn't understand everything presented in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems, I now have context and elements to look for when I eventually read the rest of Shakespeare's works.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews