Shakespeare's Sonnets

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:04.8	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.4	There's a reading list to go with it on our website,
0:09.5	and you can get news about our programs if you follow us
0:12.1	on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.
0:14.8	I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:16.7	Hello, in 1609 Thomas Thorpe published Shakespeare's Sonnets,
0:20.9	Never Before, Imprinted, it said.
0:23.0	And unlike the plays, they were never again reprinted
0:25.7	in the Perts of Lifetime.
0:27.7	They made their own way outside the main canon of Shakespeare's work,
0:31.2	wonderful, troubling, patchy, inspiring,
0:33.8	but sinister also and baffling, appealing in different ways
0:37.3	to different times.
0:39.0	Most of them are addressed to a young man,
0:41.2	which upset many people over the centuries.
0:43.2	One notorious addition even changed the pronouns.
0:45.7	When we did discuss Shakespeare's Sonnets,
0:47.8	are Hannah Crawford, senior lecturer in early modern literature
0:51.7	at King's College London, Don Patterson, poet,
0:55.4	and professor of poetry at the University of St Andrews,
0:58.2	and Emma Smith, professor of Shakespeare's Sonnets
	...

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