William Shakespeare

John Kerrigan

William Shakespeare is a global icon for his plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, but his poetic meditations on love are among the most powerful and evocative poems ever written. This Penguin Classics edition of Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint is edited by John Kerrigan. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' The language of Shakespeare's sonnets has become inseparable from the language of love in English; but the force and tenderness of these poems is undiminished by age. When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The 154 sonnets - all but two of which are addressed to a beautiful young man, 'Mr W.H.', or a treacherous 'dark lady' - contain some of the most exquisite and haunting poetry ever written, and deal with eternal subjects such as love and infidelity, memory and mortality, and the destruction wreaked by Time. Also included is A Lover's Complaint, originally published with the sonnets, in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her betrayal by a heartless seducer. In his illuminating introduction, John Kerrigan examines how the sonnets are intertwined, the ways in which these works have been interpreted and the themes running through them. This edition also includes further reading, commentaries on each poem, a textual history, variant and further sonnets and an index of first lines. If you enjoyed Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, you might like John Milton's Paradise Lost, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it'John Keats

The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint

Peter Robinson

Professor of English 2000 John Kerrigan, Sol

The Thing about Roy Fisher is the first critical book to be dedicated to the work of this outstanding poet, who has won many admirers for his explorations of the modem city, his experiments with perception and sensory experience, his jazz-inspired prose, and his political and cultural comedies. The collection brings together a distinguished group of contributors: poets and critics, from several generations, active on both sides of the Atlantic. In a dozen newly commissioned essays they discuss the entire range of Roy Fisher’s work, from its fraught beginnings in the 1950s through such major texts of the 1960s and 1970s as City, The Ship’s Orchestra and Wonders of Obligation, to A Furnace, his 1980s masterpiece, and beyond. The essays are closely engaged with the fabric of Fisher’s verse, but they also bring into view a fascinating array of connections between contemporary poetry and philosophy, psychology; the visual arts and jazz. The Thing about Roy Fisher ends with a full and up-to-date bibliography; an essential starting point for further study of this versatile and complex writer, whose centrality and importance within modern English and European poetry is now more than ever apparent. Kerrigan and Robinson’s collection provides a helpful introduction to Roy Fisher’s work, and will be necessary reading for anyone with a live interest in modern poetry. "If you haven’t been introduced before, meet Roy Fisher; a major figure of twentieth century literature-inventive, exciting and unpredictable."—Eleanor Cooke, Raw Edge "Roy Fisher’s work is something altogether rare in contemporary British poetry."—David Sexton, The Sunday Times

Critical Studies

The Thing about Roy Fisher

Shakespeare's Binding Language is an innovative, substantial but highly readable study by a respected scholar-critic who has already published a series of well-received books and editions with OUP and Penguin and who is also known for his pieces in the Guardian, TLS, and London Review of Books.It explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges and the other verbal and performative acts by which characterscommit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everydayprofanity gave shape and texture to life. John Kerrigan gives a freshly researched account of this context, but he focuses on the drama. Across the sweep of Shakespeare's career, from the early histories to the late romances, this book opens new perspectives on key dramatic moments and illuminates language and action.

Shakespeare's Binding Language

Includes essays on Shakespeare originally published 1987-1997.

Essays

On Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature

Revenge has long been a central theme in Western culture. From Homer to Nietzsche, from St. Paul to Sylvia Plath, major writers have been fascinated by its emotional intensity and by the questions it raises about the nature of justice, violence, sexuality, and death. John Kerrigan employs both wide-ranging historical analysis and subtle attention to individual texts to explore the culture of vengeance in several languages and genres. Thus, he shows how evolving attitudes to retribution have shaped and reconstituted tragedy in the West and elucidates the remarkable capacity of this ancient theme to generate innovative works of art. Although this book is a literary study, it makes use of anthropology, social theory, and moral philosophy. As a result, it will be of interest to students in a variety of disciplines, as well as to the general reader.

Aeschylus to Armageddon

Revenge Tragedy

John Kerrigan's unique study of 17th-century anglophone literature explores remarkable work produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland and shows how preoccupied Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell were with the interactions between the peoples of the British-Irish archipelago. This major book resets the terms of the debate for scholars of the period.

Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707

Archipelagic English

This compact, engaging book puts Shakespeare's originality in historical context and looks at how he worked with his sources: the plays, poems, chronicles and romances on which his own plays are based.

Shakespeare's Originality

This remarkable, innovative book explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges and the other utterances and acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everyday profanity gave shape and texture to life. The proper use of such language, and the extent of its power to bind, was argued over by lawyers, religious writers, and satirists, and these debates inform literature and drama. Shakespeare's Binding Language gives a freshly researched account of these contexts, but it is focused on the plays. What motives should we look for when characters asseverate or promise? How far is binding language self-persuasive or deceptive? When is it allowable to break a vow? How do oaths and promises structure an audience's expectations? Across the sweep of Shakespeare's career, from the early histories to the late romances, this book opens new perspectives on key dramatic moments and illuminates language and action. Each chapter gives an account of a play or group of plays, yet the study builds to a sustained investigation of some of the most important systems, institutions, and controversies in early modern England, and of the wiring of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Scholarly but accessible, and offering startling insights, this is a major contribution to Shakespeare studies by one of the leading figures in the field.

John Kerrigan

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