Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems

William Shakespeare, 1609

Poetry Shakespeare

Shakespeare's sonnets and narrative poems explore desire, beauty and the attempt to preserve experience in verse.

Read the book Contents

Length: 21 chapters
Reading time: About 4 hr 53 min
Words: 69,731

About the book

This volume includes the sonnets alongside longer narrative poems such as Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. The forms offer different scales for exploring attraction, persuasion and conflict. A concentrated address to another person can sit beside an extended scene of action.

The opening sonnets connect beauty with the passage of time and the wish for continuity. Their arguments turn within tightly organised lines, often changing emphasis as they approach a conclusion. Reading them as acts of persuasion makes their questions and reversals as significant as their declarations of feeling.

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Poetry Shakespeare

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. William Shakespeare died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK.