Page 218 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 23: Shakespeare’s Sonnets

seldom been reprinted. The Lover’s Complaint seems to be a very early poem, but no date of Notes
composition of the poem can be assigned.

23.1.2 Venus and Adonis

Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s narrative poem in six-line stanzas, was published by Richard
Field (1561 - 1624). The poem was dedicated to Shakespeare’s patron, Henry Wriothesley, Third
Earl of Southampton (1573-1624). This dedication refers to the author’s “unpolisht lines” and contains
the typically fawning language of a commoner addressing a nobleman in the hope of obtaining, or
retaining, their patronage in exchange for poems dedicated to the recipient.

23.1.3 The Rape of Lucrece

On May 9, 1594, the poem was entered in the Hall Book of the Worshipful Company of Stationers,
the English government’s pre-publication registry. The poem was listed in the Hall Book under the
title of The Ravishment of Lucrece but was published with the title Lucrece. The Rape of Lucrece
was substituted as a title at a later date. The Rape of Lucrece is a narrative poem resembling a
revenge tragedy with 1,855 lines.

23.1.4 The Phoenix and the Turtle

In 1601 a very fine poem subsequently titled The Phoenix and the Turtle appeared untitled as one of
the Poetical Essays appended to Robert Chester’s Love’s Martyr: or Rosalind’s Complaint. It was
attributed to William, and many scholars have accepted the poem as genuine. The date of composition
of the poem is unknown, but this poem must be a more mature work.

23.1.5 The Passionate Pilgrim

The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) was a poetry collection containing twenty poems by various poets.
The title page to the second edition contains the ascription “By W. Shakespeare” but only five of the
poems appear to be his. The poems, or Sonnets 138 and 144, despite the “never before imprinted”
claim of “a Book called Shakespeares sonnettes”, were included, albeit in a slightly different format,
in The Passionate Pilgrim poem.
In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two
narrative poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual
advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful
Tarquin Influenced by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that
result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare’s
lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover’s Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduc-
tion by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now
accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover’s Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred
by leaden effects. The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester’s 1601 Love’s Martyr, mourns
the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of
sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare’s name but
without his permission.

Write about two important poems of Shakespeare.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 211