Browse Items (9 total)

"A Request to his Scornefull Love" : Benson’s headers were always in the third person. Here Benson groups Sonnets 88-91 into a single unbroken lyric.

"The Picture of True Love" : Benson rearranged the order of the poems in the 1609 Sonnets volume, arranging sonnets under thematic headings that presented them as a general lyric description of love and inhibited readings integrating the poems as a…

Following Malone’s interpretation, the 19th century was eager to read the Sonnets for evidence of Shakespeare’s intimate personal life. The introduction to the facsimile volume assumes that the “Dark Lady,” as the sonnet mistress became known, was a…

By 1880, photolithography was able to convey the feel of the original pages of the book, while adding features that frame a reader’s interpretive encounter with the text, such as the line numbering here.

In reprinting sonnet 108, Benson changes the text of the poem, replacing the poem’s address to the beloved as “sweet boy” with address to a “sweet-love,” removing the reference to a male beloved.

Title Page. Benson’s edition of Shakespeare’s poems included the first new edition of the Sonnets since their initial publication in 1609. The volume contains a mix of Shakepseare’s sonnets and songs as well as works by other authors.

Title Page
Though this volume of Shakespeare’s poetry was printed on its own, its title (“Volume the Seventh”) and layout were designed to invite the owner to add it to Rowe’s 6-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays.

Excerpt
The volume reprinted…

This 1880 photolithographic facsimile reproduces Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ title page. No evidence exists tying Shakespeare directly to the publication of his sonnets. We don’t know whether he chose the order of the poems.