First Readers of Shakespeares Sonnets, 1590-1790

First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets reintroduces many early readings of Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that studying the priorities and interpretations of these previous readers expands the modern critical applications of these poems, thereby affording them numerous future applications.

For more than four centuries, cultural preferences, literary values, critical contexts, and personal tastes have governed readers' responses to Shakespeare's sonnets. Early private readers often considered these poems in light of the religious, political, and humanist values by which they lived. Other seventeenth- and eighteenth- century readers, such as stationers and editors, balanced their personal literary preferences against the imagined or actual interests of the literate public to whom they marketed carefully curated editions of the sonnets, often successfully. Whether public or private, however, many disparate sonnet interpretations from the sonnets' first two centuries in print have been overlooked by modern sonnet scholarship, with its emphasis on narrative and amorous readings of the 1609 sequence. First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets reintroduces many early readings of Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that studying the priorities and interpretations of these previous readers expands the modern critical applications of these poems, thereby affording them numerous future applications. This volume draws upon book history, manuscript studies, and editorial theory to recover four lost critical approaches to the sonnets, highlighting early readers' interests in Shakespeare's classical adaptations, political applicability, religious themes, and rhetorical skill during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Autorentext

Faith D. Acker received her doctorate in Renaissance Literature from the University of St Andrews. Subsequently, and while writing this book, she has taught at The University of Sheffield, Cornerstone Academy, Pellissippi State Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, Montgomery College, and Signum University. Her additional work on the sonnets' early readers appears in Canonising Shakespeare: Stationers and the Book Trade, 1640-1740 (eds. Depledge and Kirwan, 2017) and is forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly.

Zusammenfassung
First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets reintroduces many early readings of Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that studying the priorities and interpretations of these previous readers expands the modern critical applications of these poems, thereby affording them numerous future applications.

Inhalt

The Author to the Reader

Introduction: 'The Meaning' of the Sonnets

The Sonnets, their texts, and their readers

1. The Passionate Pilgrim and Shakespeare's 'sugred' reputation Texts and editions ** Pilgrim as a sonnet sequence

   Shakespeare's vendible name and relevant prints

   Supplementing Shakespeare with the classics

   Reading and revising the sonnets ****

2. Reading and Revising Shake-Speare's Sonnets (1609) Structure, contexts, and paratexts of the 1609 quarto

   Thorpe and the critics

   Sonnets and sequences: Revisionist love stories

   Reading Thorpe's Sonnet 2

   Annotating the sonnets ****

3. The manuscripts of Sonnet 2: Sex, sonnets, and spirituality Extant manuscript copies of Sonnet 2

   Sexual contexts for Sonnet 2

   Sonnet 2 in politics and religion

   Friends and elegies: Reading Sonnet 2 among epitaphs ****

4. John Benson's sonnet sequences (Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent.) Benson and Shakespeare

   Part I: Eternity of beauty

   Part II: Miscellaneity and duality

   Part III: A Marriage of perjured minds

   Part IV: Classics and imputed works ****

5. Celebrations of Church and King: An early Cambridge reader Reading habits and approaches

   Cambridge origins

   Poems in praise of God

   Poems to honour the King

   Contextualizing women

   For the love of God, not woman ****

6. Restoration revisions: Musical, dramatic, and miscellany readings Mountebanks and martyrs: Lawes' musical setting

   Gender, duplicity, and eternal passion: Suckling's Brennoralt

   Manuscript variants and textual fluidity: Reading and sharing

   Extracts, miscellanies, and new contexts: Adapting the sonnets in the late seventeenth century ****

7. Supplementing Shakespeare and creating the canon Critical predilections: The autobiographical Shakespeare

   Life after Benson: Supplements and supplementarity ** Notes and Various Readings: The ultimate supplement

   Capell's cento and Shakespeare's language

   Collecting Shakespeare: Complete and incomplete canons ****

8. Edmond Malone: Plotting the Sonnets The Search for authorial authenticity

   Poems and plays

   The Editor and his characters ****

9. Reading the Sonnets after Malone: Independent responses Debating the poems: Critical annotations

Sonnet sententiae

Reading and editing the eighteenth century

Beyond Malone: The New debate

Sonnet Futures