The Sonnets

Description

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now in a dazzling new series design

A Penguin Classic
 
This edition of The Sonnets is edited with an introduction by John Hollander and was recently repackaged with cover art by Manuja Waldia. Waldia received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for the Pelican Shakespeare series.

The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With stunning new covers, definitive texts, and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come.“Gorgeous new Shakespeare paperbacks.” 
—Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

“I have been using the Pelican Shakespeare for years in my lecture course—it’s invaluable, the best individual-volume series available for students.”
—Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April, 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He died on April 23, 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. 

A. R. Braunmuller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has written critical volumes on George Peele and George Chapman and has edited plays in both the Oxford (King John) and Cambridge (Macbeth) series of Shakespeare editions. He is also general editor of The New Cambridge Shakespeare. 

Stephen Orgel is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of the Humanities at Stanford University and general editor of the Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. His books include Imagining Shakespeare, The Authentic Shakespeare, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England and The Illusion of Power.

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights; Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you  master  now.  So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not still enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

US

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