The Poems

This is a fully annotated edition of all the poems that can now confidently be assigned to Shakespeare, excluding the Sonnets. It contains Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, and A Lover's Complaint. John Roe's introduction to each poem examines the classical and Renaissance traditions behind the poetry and the conditions under which the poems were produced. The commentary demonstrates how in his management of formal rhetoric Shakespeare fashions a living language out of handbook oratory.