Book description
INTRODUCTION BY GERMAINE GREER
Shakespeare's sonnets are lyrical, haunting, beautiful and often
breath-taking, representing one of the finest bodies of poetry ever
penned. They demonstrate the writer's skill in capturing the full
range of human emotions within a carefully prescribed form and
creating something unique in every one. Some are familiar - Shall I
compare thee to a summer's day? - others unexpected, but
together they form an extraordinary meditation on the nature of love,
lust, beauty and time.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in
Warwickshire and was baptised on 26 April 1564. Thought to have been
educated at the local grammar school, he married Anne Hathaway, with
whom he went on to have three children, at the age of eighteen, before
moving to London to work in the theatre. Two erotic poems, Venus
and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were published in 1593
and 1594 and records of his plays begin to appear in 1594. The first
edition of the sonnets was published in 1609 but evidence suggests
that Shakespeare had been writing them for years for a private readership.
Shakespeare spent the last five years of his life in Stratford, by
now a wealthy man. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy
Trinity Church in Stratford. The first collected edition of his works
was published in 1623.
