SOURCE: Introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1997, pp. 1-106.

In the following excerpt, Duncan-Jones reviews the publication history of Shakespeare's sonnets, focusing on several aspects of critical debate related to the 1609 publication.

Publishing History

The Authenticity of the 1609 Quarto

As published in 1609, Shakespeare's Sonnets was by no means so aberrant and mistimed as those who attempt to pigeon-hole the entire sequence as early work have often maintained. It is true that the great Elizabethan vogue for sonneteering, in the wake of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, had spent its force by the end of the 1590s. But James's accession in 1603 stimulated a second wave. From the viewpoint of Jacobean readers, Q could be received as part of this small but vigorous movement to provide the new court culture with its own refashioned sonnet sequences and lyric collections. These were no longer idealistically...