Shakespeare's Sonnets

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2020

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Did Shakespeare intend to publish his sonnets? For whom were they written? What do they reveal about their author? We talk to Dr. Jane Kingsley-Smith about her newest book, The Afterlife of Shakespeare's Sonnets, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. The book is a social history of the sonnets’ reception, starting with a glowing 1598 review that it's likely practically no one ever read and travelling through over 400 years of readers adoring and abhorring Shakespeare’s 152 complicated poems. Dr. Jane Kingsley-Smith edited Love's Labor's Lost for the Norton Shakespeare Third Edition, and The Duchess of Malfi for Penguin in 2015. She is the author of Shakespeare's Drama in Exile (Palgrave, 2003), and Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Kingsley-Smith is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 21, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, "To Thee I Send This Written Embassage,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Evan Marquardt at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Gareth Wood at The Sound Company in London.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We have literally been trying for years to figure out the best way to bring Shakespeare's sonnets to this podcast.
0:08.4	I'm happy to say we think we've finally found it.
0:18.1	From the Folcher Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore,
0:24.2	the Folgers director. If it's possible for a book to be both exhaustive and sprightly,
0:30.9	Dr. Jane Kingsley-Smith has done it with The Afterlife of Shakespeare's sonnets, published by Cambridge
0:37.1	University Press in 2019.
0:39.9	The book is a social history of the sonnets' reception, from the first glowing review that
0:45.4	it's likely practically no one ever read, to an original publication history that
0:50.6	raised questions about their authenticity for centuries centuries through the next 400-plus years
0:56.5	of them being adored and abhorred. And a lot of it is plain fascinating. Dr. Kingsley-Smith relays
1:04.6	all of it in such an approachable manner that it's likely not the last time we'll be having her
1:09.6	on our podcast.
1:15.4	I tell you that to say that this interview isn't a complete look at the sonnets.
1:17.8	It's just the very, very beginning.
1:23.0	We call this podcast, To thee I send this written embassage.
1:27.2	Jane Kingsley-Smith is interviewed by Barbara Bogave.
1:35.2	I'd like to go back to the beginning when these sonnets were written because they have a pre-publishing existence.
1:40.4	So who were they written for the sonnets and how did they get to them?
1:41.3	How are they distributed?
1:47.5	I mean, it's really interesting this question of who they're written for, partly because they seem to have been written over a really long period of time. Some of them, you know,
1:53.5	maybe really 1580s, so Shakespeare potentially courting Anne Hathaway, right through to the
2:00.0	Jacobian period. Some of the language
	...

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