Shakespeare's Sonnets Among His Private Friends

Intended for all readers an exciting innovative approach to Shakespeares Sonnets.His sugared Sonnets among his private friends. Thats how Shakespeares Sonnets were described in the only contemporary reference to them. This brings up the image of a talented young poet-with a penchant for irreverent fun-getting together with friends to read his new sonnet cycle. Numerous sonnet cycles were published that typically told the story of thwarted love. The same topics are repeated: a chaste and beautiful lady a love-sick poet dreaming only of his beloved sunk into despair by her cruelty (cruel only because she decides to remain chaste). Shakespeares Sonnets are like this but with a twist-adding a love triangle that turning convention upside down. Working out all the possibilities of this intriguing story as the sonnets progress is all part of the fun.Atkins invites you to imagine that you are among the friends our poet has allowed to see his new sonnets. Youll read the poems and the discussion of each one as we try to figure out the story. See what it might have been like to read Shakespeares Sonnets among his private friends.With glosses of difficult words and phrases and an explanation of each poem this book is as carefully edited as the acclaimed variorum edition published by Atkins in 2007 Shakespeares Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. It has the same sensitive readings of verse that made his variorum unique. (Atkins has made a complete metrical analysis of all 154 poems which serves as an excellent companion to Shakespeares Sonnets Among His Private Friends. It is available free at amonghisprivatefriends.com.) Also unique to this edition is a look at how the last 28 sonnets about a dark lady may have been influenced by Christopher Marlowes English translation of Ovids erotic poems Amores (Book 1 of which is included in an appendix).