In 16 o nine, thomas thorp published shakespear's sonits never before imprinted. Unlike the plays, they were never again reprinted in the poet's life time. Most of them are addressed to a young man, which upset many people over the centuries. One notorious addition even changed the pronouns with me to discuss sh Shakespeare's sonat or hanna crawford.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the collection of poems published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, “never before imprinted”. Yet, while some of Shakespeare's other poems and many of his plays were often reprinted in his lifetime, the Sonnets were not a publishing success. They had to make their own way, outside the main canon of Shakespeare’s work: wonderful, troubling, patchy, inspiring and baffling, and they have appealed in different ways to different times. Most are addressed to a man, something often overlooked and occasionally concealed; one early and notorious edition even changed some of the pronouns.
With:
Hannah Crawforth
Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at King’s College London
Don Paterson
Poet and Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews
And
Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson