The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry

775 Pages·2013·14.343 MB·English

by  Jonathan Post

the oxford handbook of
SH A K E SPE A R E ’ S
P OE T RY
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THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
SHAKESPEARE’S
POETRY
Edited by
JONATHAN F. S. POST
1
3

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Preface
jonathan f. s. post
Th e general motive for Th e Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry is simple. Aft er more
than 400 years, Shakespeare’s poetry remains one of the chief glories of the English lan-
guage. Although the quaint image of every schoolboy carrying a copy of the bard’s writ-
ings in his satchel no longer holds, Shakespeare’s verse remains a vital part of Western
thinking, both a cornerstone of the academic curriculum, one of the few remaining in
the humanities, and a rich source of inspiration and pleasure to a great variety of peo-
ple, whether his words are spoken on the stage, used to solemnize a marriage, or pored
over—or ‘burned through’ if you’re John Keats—in the privacy of one’s own room, by
reader, writer, critic, or poet. How right, in retrospect, that the authorial subject of this
Handbook should have penned the lines: ‘Not marble nor the gilded monuments | Of
princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme’ (Sonnet 55). So far-sighted, and so true.
Th e scholarly cue is more specifi c. For the last three decades, the study of Shakespeare
has been largely dominated by a number of theoretical perspectives ranging from new
historicism and cultural materialism to performance studies, including gender studies,
perspectives that have nearly displaced a knowledgeable understanding of, and interest
in, what an earlier generation of critics would have assumed to be the central working
conditions of Shakespeare’s muse: that his writings, fi rst and foremost, belonged to the
broader fi eld of verbal art or poesis.
Th ere are clear signs of a re-emphasis and correction already taking place, both edi-
torially and critically. Th e former is most evident in Colin Burrow’s exemplary Oxford
edition of Th e Complete Sonnets and Poems (2002), exemplary, in part, because ‘com-
plete.’ Th e fi rst edition since the late nineteenth century to include all the poems, it
serves as a judiciously annotated counterweight to the many editions of Shakespeare’s
plays, beginning with the 1623 Folio (FIGURE P.1 ), in which the poems have appeared,
if at all, in an obscure or marginal relationship to the drama, a positioning oft en mani-
fested in critical assumptions as well: that the narrative poems were written while—or
because—the theatres were closed and for a limited elite audience (FIGURES P.2 and
P.3); that the Sonnets appeared largely as a belated aft erthought to the 1590s rage or as
imperfect renderings of passions more suited to the theatre (FIGURE P.4); or that ‘Th e
Phoenix and the Turtle,’ as it came to be called, was Shakespeare’s attempt around 1601
to sound like John Donne. If Shakespeare were ever to be accused of writing with the
left hand, it would not be for his prose, almost all of which appears in the drama, but for
his poems.
vi preface
Burrow has hardly been alone in this venture, either as editor or critic, and at the
moment there exist in print an exceptional number of fi ne editions of Shakespeare’s
poems available to students and scholars alike. (A comparison of diff erent editions of
the Sonnets forms the subject of Chapter 24.)1 Th ere have also been, especially of late
(although with valuable recent antecedents), important critical monographs and essay
collections that seek to make the poetry an essential part of our understanding of
Shakespeare’s oeuvre, including the idea that Shakespeare came to regard (or present)
himself as a poet and not merely a writer of scripts to be performed by an acting company
in which he was a shareholder. Central to this ongoing debate, sounded as recently as
Katherine Duncan-Jones’ S hakespeare: Upstart Crow to Sweet Swan, 1592–1623 (Arden,
2011), has been David Schalkwyk’s S peech and performance in Shakespeare’s sonnets
and plays (Cambridge, 2002), Lukas Erne’s Shakespeare as Literary Artist (Cambridge,
2003), Patrick Cheney’s S hakespeare, National Poet-Playwright (Cambridge, 2004), fol-
lowed by his edition of critical essays for Th e Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s
Poetry (2007), and the longer but more selectively focused Blackwell Companion to
Shakespeare’s Sonnets , ed. Michael Schoenfeldt (2007).
Th e Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry contributes to this critical reassess-
ment of the place of the poems in Shakespeare’s career, but it casts a deliberately wider
net than can be found in these earlier collections. It understands poetry to be not just a
formal category designating a particular literary genre (narrative poem, sonnet, com-
plaint, lyric, song, or epitaph) but to be inclusive of the dramatic verse as well, and of
Shakespeare’s infl uence as a poet on later generations of writers in English and beyond.
To that end, the volume focuses on a broad set of interpretive concerns: general mat-
ters of style, earlier and later; questions of infl uence from classical, continental, and
native sources; the importance of words, line, and rhyme to meaning; the signifi cance
of song and ballads in the drama; the place of gender in the verse, including the rela-
tionship of Shakespeare’s poetry to the visual arts; the diff erent values attached to speak-
ing ‘Shakespeare’ in the theater; and the adaptation of Shakespearean verse (as distinct
from performance) into other periods and languages. If the collection’s circumference is
deliberately wide, the volume nonetheless includes a traditional center in the section—
indeed the largest section in the volume—devoted to the poems themselves, including
‘A Lover’s Complaint.’ Whatever controversy surrounds the authorship of this poem, it
has become (like Donne’s ‘Sappho to Philaenis’) an important site of criticism in the
early modern period.
In spite of its breadth, it is important to insist that coverage was never simply the goal
of the volume—coverage, in any event, being an exceptionally illusory goal in the case of
Shakespeare. Th e essays pursue individual arguments, make distinct claims; they follow
out, as essays should, the lines of their own reasoning. Sometimes in dialogue with one
another, but more oft en with readers and writers across the centuries, their major point
1 To those editions in print, cited in Chapter 24, should be added Kenneth J. Larsen’s online Essays on
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, with introduction, text, and commentary, at <http://www.williamshakespeare-
sonnets.com/> (accessed on 1 July 2012.)
preface vii
in common is to keep Shakespeare’s poetry (sometimes minutely perceived, other times
broadly construed) in the foreground of their thinking. Although the division of the
volume into seven categories refl ects the general disposition of topics, these boundar-
ies are also quite elastic, as a glance at the Table of Contents will reveal. It should also be
said that if the volume as a whole urges renewed involvement in the complex matter of
Shakespeare’s poetry, it does so, as the individual essays testify, by way of responding to
critical trends and discoveries made during the last three decades.
All the essays were written specifi cally for this volume. For the willing eff orts and
great talent of the contributors, I am especially grateful. A few deserve special mention
for early help in thinking through the lines of inquiry such a volume might take: Albert
Braunmuller, Colin Burrow, Paul Edmondson, Linda Gregerson, John Kerrigan, Russ
McDonald, Melissa Sanchez, Bruce Smith, and Gordon Teskey. Th anks to the generosity
of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the good work of Karen
Burgess and Brett Landenberger, a number of the essays enjoyed an early airing at a con-
ference held at UCLA in May, 2011, ‘Where has all the Verse Gone? Shakespeare’s Poetry
on the Page & Stage’.
Th e Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry is part of a series of Oxford Handbooks
on Shakespeare under the general direction of Arthur Kinney. I want to thank him for
inviting me to take on this project. At Oxford University Press, Andrew McNeillie off ered
early words of encouragement. I am especially grateful to Jacqueline Baker for com-
missioning the volume and seeing it through to publication, and to Rachel Platt for her
timely response to many queries. Th e gratifi cation in putting together a large collection
like this one, enabled in part by an excellent research assistant, Claire Byun, with fur-
ther help from Heather Sontong, is not simply seeing a book fi nally emerge but also the
friendships made or renewed along the way. Among the most important to acknowledge
here is the always calmly resourceful Jeanette Gilkison, in the Department of English at
UCLA, and Susan Green of the Huntington Library. I also want to acknowledge, with
thanks, the Academic Senate and the Council on Research at UCLA for continuing to
support my scholarship over the years, including generous help with the publication of
this book, and the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and
Amy Gordainer for her excellent work preparing the index. For the past twenty sum-
mers, it has been my pleasure to teach, with my colleague Albert Braunmuller, many
students who have learned to walk the pentameter line (and much else) while partici-
pating in the UCLA Shakespeare Program in London and Stratford. I like to think they
will be eager and wise readers of the essays in this volume. Neither the program nor this
book would exist, however, without the help of my companion in this and all else, Susan
Gallick.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Shakespeare are from Th e Oxford
Shakespeare: Th e Complete Works , Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (eds), (2nd edn Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005).
viii preface
figure p.1. Th e catalogue of the thirty-fi ve plays included in the 1623 Folio, excluding the
poems. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
preface ix
figure p.2. Highly craft ed quarto title page of the 1594 edition of Venus and Adonis . First
published in 1593, the poem went through sixteen editions by 1640. Th e Latin epigraph from
Ovid’s A mores reads: ‘Let the common herd be amazed by worthless things; but for me let
gold Apollo provide cups full of the water of the Muses.’ By permission of Th e Huntington
Library.