What’s the story, Shakespeare?

Shakespeare was a great storyteller. Whether it was comedy, history or tragedy, he used his skills to make his stories engaging. Drama, suspense, foreshadowing, comic relief—it’s all there in his plays. What about The Sonnets? There’s a story there, too. There’s not much argument about that. (There’s a minority opinion that doesn’t go along, but you can find someone to disagree with just about anything.) Some editors used to try to rearrange The Sonnets to make the story more coherent, but nobody could agree on an arrangement. I think they were missing the point. The story is not supposed to be coherent. It’s not a play or a narrative poem (like Venus and Adonis), it’s a sonnet cycle, a form of writing based on Petrarch’s example from the 14th century that became very popular in England in the late 16th century. Many authorities have understood that The Sonnets are an example of a sonnet cycle. What’s odd is that it hasn’t been treated like one. Petrarch’s famous cycle, Rime Sparse, has endless commentary associated with it, much of it discussing the story it tells of the poet’s love for his beloved, Laura. This has not been done for The Sonnets. An occasional article will appear in a journal discussing some parts of the story, but no edition of The Sonnets comments on the story that extends through its 154 poems. Until now. 

In Shakespeare’s Sonnets Among His Private Friends, I discuss The Sonnets specifically through the story it tells. It’s a great story. (Shakespeare uses the same techniques he does in his plays to make the story engaging.) I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s nothing like a typical sonnet story of a man pining for a chaste woman. This is a story of great friendship and love between two men, complicated by a rival poet who vies for attention and a love triangle with a woman with whom the poet has a troubling relationship. There are ups and downs, absences and returns, bad behavior on both sides, forgiveness and regret. As beautiful as many of the poems that make up The Sonnets are, the story they tell make them even more beautiful. This is a story worth telling, and that’s why I decided to tell it.