First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1590-1790

The Author to the Reader

Introduction: 'The Meaning' of the Sonnets

The Sonnets, their texts, and their readers






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




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




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




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




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




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




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




Edmond Malone: Plotting the Sonnets
The Search for authorial authenticity

Poems and plays

The Editor and his characters




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

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