The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint

An elaborately annotated edition of Shakespeare's masterpieces of wit and erotic word-play.

When a volume of poetry entitled Shakespeares Sonnets. Never before Imprinted appeared in 1609, Shakespeare was forty-five and most of his greatest plays had seen several performances. Some of the sonnets, speaking of the begetting of children, mortality and memory, art, desire and jealousy, are addressed to a beloved youth; others are addressed to a treacherous mistress, a "dark lady." Appended …