Auden, W. H. "Introduction," in Shakespeare: The Sonnets, edited by William Burto, Penguin, 1999.
A lively, opinionated essay on the sonnets by one of the finest twentieth century poets. Auden pours scorn on the attempt to identify the real life characters in the sonnets, but he does argue that the primary experience that gave rise to the sonnets was a mystical perception of what he calls the Vision of Eros.
Bloom, Harold, Ed, William Shakespeare's Sonnets, Modern Critical Interpretations, Chelsea House, 1987.
This is a collection of six critical essays on the sonnets. The essays are of varying difficulty; the most useful for the beginning student is C. L. Barber's "An Essay on Shakespeare's Sonnets," in which he argues that Shakespeare uses the sonnets as a vehicle for the transformation of suffering into passion.
Blomquist, Eric, .....
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