Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry

A lively exploration of Shakespeare’s poems and how they speak to readers

Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry presents a fresh interpretation of Shakespeare’s non-dramatic poems, providing insights into the individual poems, their themes and composition, and their relation to the cultural context of Shakespeare’s world. With an engaging narrative style, author Dympna Callaghan illustrates the ways Shakespeare’s poetry often converges with reality yet remains distinct from dramatic verse and the language of everyday life.

Presented chronologically, easily accessible chapters examine Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, the Sonnets, and A Lover’s Complaint. Special attention is paid to the distinctive ways in which lineation, rhyme, verse forms, and meter serve to delineate or erase the boundaries of Shakespeare’s poetry. Throughout the book, the author explains how Shakespeare’s language is influenced by predecessors such as Ovid and Petrarch while highlighting how ideas about the social and cultural function of poetry permeate Shakespeare’s works.

Helps readers gain a better understanding of Shakespeare’s poems Explore how themes and composition of poetry are infused into Shakespeare’s works Addresses the significance of the material form in which Shakespeare’s poems appear Includes a discussion of songs, poems, and sonnets embedded in Shakespeare’s dramatic verse

Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry is a must-have book for undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and general readers alike.