The Complete Poems of Shakespeare

Cathy Shrank, Raphael Lyne, Cathy Shrank, Raphael Lyne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317481362
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Although best known for his plays, William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was also a poet who achieved extraordinary depth and variety in only a few key works. This edition of his poetry provides detailed notes, commentary and appendices resulting in an academically thorough and equally accessible edition to Shakespeare's poetry.

The editors present his non-dramatic poems in the chronological order of their print publication: the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece; the metaphysical 'Let the Bird of Loudest Lay' (often known as The Phoenix and the Turtle); all 154 Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint. In headnotes and extensive annotations to the texts, Cathy Shrank and Raphael Lyne elucidate historical contexts, publication histories, and above all the literary and linguistic features of poems whose subtleties always reward careful attention.

Substantial appendices trace the sources for Shakespeare's narrative poems and the controversial text The Passionate Pilgrim, as well as providing information about poems posthumously attributed to him, and the English sonnet sequence. Shrank and Lyne guide readers of all levels with a glossary of rhetorical terms, an index of the poems (titles and first lines), and an account of Shakespeare's rhymes informed by scholarship on Elizabethan pronunciation. With all these scholarly resources supporting a newly edited, modern-spelling text, this edition combines accessibility with layers of rich information to inform the most sophisticated reading.

p.663

Appendix 1

Venus and Adonis: principal source

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 10, translated by Arthur Golding

Arthur Golding published four books of his translation in 1565, and then the complete The XV Books of P. Ovidius Naso, Entitled Metamorphosis, Translated out of Latin into English Metre (London: William Seres, 1567). Further editions followed in 1575, 1584, 1587, 1593, 1603 and 1612. It is generally agreed that Shakespeare knew the translation well (Taylor 1994/95; Bate 1993), even if it was not his only feasible access to Ovid and his stories. The 1567 edition has a dedicatory epistle to Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, which outlines a moralising method for reading the Metamorphoses. Its account of Book 10 (213–23) is included here:

The tenth booke cheefly dooth containe one kynd of argument

Reproving most prodigious lusts of such as have bene bent

Too incest most unnatural. And in the latter end

215

It sheweth in Hippomenes how greatly folk offend,

That are ingrate for benefits which God or man bestow

Uppon them in the time of neede. Moreover it dooth show

That beawty (will they nill they) aye dooth men in daunger throw:

And that it is a foolyshnesse too stryve ageinst the thing

220

Which God before determineth too passe in tyme too bring.

And last of all Adonis death dooth shew that manhod strives

Against forewarning though men see the perill of theyr lyves.

There is also a Preface ‘Too the Reader’ that offers a more simplistic moralisation, including a brisk typology of the gods (57–78, part of which is included here):

Then must wee thinke the learned men that did theis names frequent,

Some further things and purposes by those devises ment.

By Jove and Juno understand all states of princely port:

By Ops and Saturne auncient folke that are of elder sort:

60

By Phoebus yoong and lusty brutes of hand and courage stout:

By Mars the valeant men of warre that love too feight it out:

[. . .]

By Bacchus all the meaner trades and handycraftes are ment:

By Venus such as of the fleshe too filthie lust are bent.

By Neptune such as keepe the seas: By Phebe maydens chast,

And Pilgrims such as wandringly theyr tyme in travell waste.

70

p.664

The translation of the Adonis section itself, like the translation in general, may not be very significantly inflected by this moralising premise (see Lyne 2001: 29–52; but also Wallace 2012). Book 10 starts with the story of the death of Eurydice and Orpheus’ mourning, his descent into Hell and his failure to bring his wife out safely. He then sings, attended by a crowd of trees (including the cypress, once Cyparissus, who asks for death when he kills his beloved stag, and Apollo changes him into a tree). He tells the stories of (i) Hyacinthus (accidentally killed by Apollo and turned into a flower), (ii) the Cerastae (who fail to worship Venus and are turned into bullocks), (iii) the Propoetides (who shamelessly prostitute themselves and are turned to stone), (iv) Pygmalion (who prays to Venus and is rewarded by his beautiful statue coming to life), (v) Myrrha (Pygmalion’s great-grand-daughter, who consummates her incestuous love for her father, becomes pregnant, and is turned into a myrrh-tree), and finally (vi) Adonis, Myrrha’s son. Book 10 ends with the death of Adonis, and Book 11 starts with the death of Orpheus.

The misbegotten chyld

Grew still within the tree, and from his mothers womb defyld

Sought meanes too bee delyvered. Her burthened womb did swell

Amid the tree, and stretcht her out. But woordes wherwith to tell

580

And utter foorth her greef did want, She had no use of speech

With which Lucina in her throwes shee might of help beseech.

Yit like a woman labring was the tree, and bowwing downe

Gave often sighes, & shed foorth teares as though shee there should drowne.

Lucina to this wofull tree came gently downe, and layd

585

Her hand theron, and speaking woordes of ease the midwife playd.

The tree did cranye, and the barke deviding made away,

And yeelded out the chyld alyve, which cryde and wayld streyght way.

The waternymphes uppon the soft sweete hearbes the chyld did lay,

And bathde him with his mothers teares. His face was such as spyght

590

Must needes have praysd. For such he was in all condicions right,

As are the naked Cupids that in tables picturde bee.

But too thentent he may with them in every poynt agree,

Let eyther him bee furnished with wings and quiver light,

Or from the Cupids take theyr wings and bowes and arrowes quight.

595

Away slippes fleeting tyme unspyde and mocks us too our face,

And nothing may compare with yeares in swiftnesse of theyr pace.

That wretched imp whom wickedly his graundfather begate,

And whom his cursed suster bare, who hidden was alate

Within the tree, and lately borne, became immediatly

600

The beawtyfullyst babe on whom man ever set his eye.

Anon a stripling hee became, and by and by a man,

And every day more beawtifull than other he becam.

That in the end Dame Venus fell in love with him: wherby

He did revenge the outrage of his mothers villanye.

605

For as the armed Cupid kist Dame Venus, unbeware

An arrow sticking out did raze hir brest uppon the bare.

The Goddesse being wounded, thrust away her sonne. The wound

Appeered not too bee so deepe as afterward was found.

It did deceyve her at the first. The beawty of the lad

610

Inflaamd her. Too Cythera Ile no mynd at all shee had.

Nor untoo Paphos where the sea beats round abo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Complete Poems of Shakespeare
• Longman Annotated English Poets
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• A Note from the General Editors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Editorial Procedures
• Venus and Adonis (ed. Raphael Lyne)
• The Rape of Lucrece (ed. Raphael Lyne)
• ‘Let the Bird of Loudest Lay’ (ed. Raphael Lyne and Cathy Shrank)
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets (ed. Cathy Shrank)
• A Lover’s Complaint (ed. Cathy Shrank)
• Appendix 1 (Raphael Lyne): Venus and Adonis: Principal Source
• Appendix 2 (Raphael Lyne): Lucrece: Principal sources
• Appendix 3 (Cathy Shrank): The Passionate Pilgrim
• Appendix 4 (Cathy Shrank): Shakespeare’s Sonnets in Manuscript
• Appendix 5 (Cathy Shrank): Shakespeare’s Sonnets and English Sonnet Sequences in Print (to 1640)
• Appendix 6 (Cathy Shrank): Poems Posthumously Attributed to Shakespeare
• Appendix 7 (Raphael Lyne and Cathy Shrank): Shakespeare’s rhymes
• Glossary of Rhetorical Terms
• Bibliography
• Index of First Lines and Titles