First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1590-1790

Faith D. Acker received her doctorate in Renaissance Literature from the University of St Andrews. Subsequently, and while writing this book, she has taught at The University of Sheffield, Cornerstone Academy, Pellissippi State Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, Montgomery College, and Signum University. Her additional work on the sonnets’ early readers appears in Canonising Shakespeare: Stationers and the Book Trade, 1640-1740 (eds. Depledge and Kirwan, 2017) and is forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly.

The Author to the Reader

Introduction: ‘The Meaning’ of the Sonnets

The Sonnets, their texts, and their readers






The Passionate Pilgrim and Shakespeare’s ‘sugred’ reputation
Texts and editions

Pilgrim as a sonnet sequence

Shakespeare’s vendible name and relevant prints

Supplementing Shakespeare with the classics

Reading and revising the sonnets




Reading and Revising Shake-Speare’s Sonnets (1609)
Structure, contexts, and paratexts of the 1609 quarto

Thorpe and the critics

Sonnets and sequences: Revisionist love stories

Reading Thorpe’s Sonnet 2

Annotating the sonnets




The manuscripts of Sonnet 2: Sex, sonnets, and spirituality
Extant manuscript copies of Sonnet 2

Sexual contexts for Sonnet 2

Sonnet 2 in politics and religion

Friends and elegies: Reading Sonnet 2 among epitaphs




John Benson’s sonnet sequences (Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent.)
Benson and Shakespeare

Part I: Eternity of beauty

Part II: Miscellaneity and duality

Part III: A Marriage of perjured minds

Part IV: Classics and imputed works




Celebrations of Church and King: An early Cambridge reader
Reading habits and approaches

Cambridge origins

Poems in praise of God

Poems to honour the King

Contextualizing women

For the love of God, not woman




Restoration revisions: Musical, dramatic, and miscellany readings
Mountebanks and martyrs: Lawes’ musical setting

Gender, duplicity, and eternal passion: Suckling’s Brennoralt

Manuscript variants and textual fluidity: Reading and sharing

Extracts, miscellanies, and new contexts: Adapting the sonnets in the late seventeenth century




Supplementing Shakespeare and creating the canon
Critical predilections: The autobiographical Shakespeare

Life after Benson: Supplements and supplementarity

Notes and Various Readings: The ultimate supplement

Capell’s cento and Shakespeare’s language

Collecting Shakespeare: Complete and incomplete canons




Edmond Malone: Plotting the Sonnets
The Search for authorial authenticity

Poems and plays

The Editor and his characters




Reading the Sonnets after Malone: Independent responses

Debating the poems: Critical annotations

Sonnet sententiae

Reading and editing the eighteenth century

Beyond Malone: The New debate

Sonnet Futures