An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems

While it is widely acknowledged that Shakespeare is the most important poet to have written in English, most people think of his poetry as the verse that is written in his plays. Apart from a few of the Sonnets, Shakespeare's non-dramatic poems are hardly familiar at all -- yet it is possible that he considered them of greater literary merit than his dramatic works. An Introduction to Shakespeare's Poems provides a lively, informative and up-to-date guide to Shakespeare's non-dramatic poetry, including the two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the Sonnets, and various minor poems, some of which have only recently, and controversially, been attributed to the Bard. Peter Hyland locates Shakespeare as a sceptical voice within the turbulent and often hostile Elizabethan market-place in which professional poets had to work, rather than depicting him as a transmitter of elitist principles. Hyland relates the poems to the aesthetic tastes, social values and political concerns of the time, and explores what Shakespeare's poetry has to offer to the twenty-first century reader. Book jacket.

Peter Hyland is Professor of English, Huron College, University of Western Ontario, Canada.