The Complete Sonnets and Poems

by William Shakespeare, Colin Burrow (Editor)

This is the only fully annotated and modernized edition to bring together Shakespeare's sonnets as well as all his poems (including those attributed to him after his death) in one volume. A full introduction discusses his development as a poet, and how the poems relate to the plays, and detailed notes explain the language and allusions. While accessibly written, the edition takes account of the most recent scholarship and criticism.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Shakespeare, Fiction, Literature, Romance, British Literature

768 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2006

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died, and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'

- William Shakespeare, 1590-ish (disputed)

There once was a young man called Will,
Who couldn't be happy until,
He'd written a sonnet,
And spent hours upon it,
Only then could he kick back and chill...

- Me, yesterday (undisputed, alas)

OK, well I'm not actually going to try to review the whole of Shakespeare's poetic output, obviously. I'm not nearly qualified enough to do so. Instead, I'll just say that the bard is one of my favourite poets. His work has resonated with me since I first studied it at school and I've returned to it time and again over the years. Actually, the fact that I know it so well enables me to just kick back and read it for pure, unadulterated pleasure, without the slightest taint of academia clawing away at my mind. Bliss.

P.S. - At this stage, I am entirely bored of the whole 'did somebody else write Shakespeare's work?' and 'did Shakespeare even exist?' arguments. Yawwwn. The work exists, somebody wrote it, it was so long ago that the identity of the author doesn't actually matter anymore except to the most pedantic, tedious academics. If you really must keep banging on about these issues, do me a favour and do it underneath somebody else's review... I just want to enjoy the work.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…that you alone are you”

With the completion of this text, I have read all of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets and poems at least once. Over the years I have read many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, some of them countless times, but never all of them. I had never read his narrative poems. Now I have. I’m proud of that.
I especially enjoyed VENUS AND ADONIS and THE RAPE OF LUCRECE, the two narrative poems. That is not a genre I typically care for, but I was really taken by them. That was perhaps the biggest surprise of this reading experience for me.
The Bard is good. I am not going to sit here and try to explain why he is. I will share a couple of personal highlights from the experience and leave you with that. It’s poetry, it will mean something else entirely different for you if you read it.

Sonnets 33-35 are a lovely sequence about being hurt by the one you love. Shakespeare distilled a lot of emotion into those 42 lines.
Sonnet 77 explores time and its passage, combined with remembrance. It speaks to the very essence of life.
Sonnets 55 and 121 are two of my favorites. Consider these lines from each one:
55- “Not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”
121- “Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed”
Sonnet 138 examines a relationship built on the lies that lovers tell each other. It is very clever, and very timeless in its premise. This line is brilliant, on a lot of levels, “When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her though I know she lies.”
Sonnet 147 might be the best poem about a toxic love/relationship ever written! Go read it and see for yourself.

As mentioned, I really enjoyed the two narrative poems. They deal with those most primal of emotions, love and lust. As long as there are people we will be dealing with these basic instincts. Here are a few lines from VENUS AND ADONIS and THE RAPE OF LUCRECE that I enjoyed.
• “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, but Lust’s effect is tempest after sun. Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain; Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done. Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies. Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.”
• “What win I if I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week or sells eternity to get a toy?”
• “Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining”

I could go on and on about these sonnets and poems. Rather, I encourage you to read them for yourself, bit by bit to make it more digestible if needed.

While reading these works there were so many times I would find a line that spoke directly into my life. Therein lies the power of truly great poetry. And that is why these great works will last!

[itsdanixx · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, plus his six other poems: A Lovers Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim, Phoenix and Turtle, The Rape of Lucrece, To the Queen and Venus and Adonis.

I definitely liked the sonnets far better than the other poems.

My favourite sonnet was number 27:

“Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired,
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired;
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see;
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.”

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

[just a note that I did not actually read the Folger edition, I'm just adding it to Goodreads for simplicity's sake as a representative for all of Shakespeare's works that are not his plays.  I'm not positive which poems are actually included in this edition!]

Anyway, some of these poems were lovely but on the whole just not my cup of tea. Venus and Adonis was definitely the highlight for me.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Willy Shakes doesn’t raise the bar for romance whoever will? Always enamored by the bard and his witticisms. These sonnets will linger on in my head for quite some time. Specifically sonnets 10, 18, 40, 102 and 109.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've dipped into Shakespeare's sonnets in the past but this is the first time I've read the whole sequence through, completely and in order - and I'm underwhelmed, especially in comparison to the superlative Astrophil and Stella by Sidney which kicked off the whole sonnet craze in the 1580s. By the time Shakespeare starts writing his own sequence (or mini sequences?) in c.1593, the sonnet craze is not just over but clichéd so this is, in part, a self-conscious attempt to re-open something that is literarily 'done'. Ending with Cupid poems, for example, which conventionally start a sequence, attempts to shake up the form, but it feels a bit half-hearted.

The sequence as a whole is fairly repetitive as it works through its phases: the 'reproductive' sonnets written to a beautiful male friend ('the master mistress of my passion'), poems about the ravages of time, of memorialisation either through a child or poetry. There's a little flurry of excitement when the friend betrays the poet-narrator giving rise to some jealousy poems, offset later by their obverse as the poet-narrator betrays the friend.

The later section (from 127 ff.) transfers the poet-narrator's obsession to a female mistress, conventionally cruel and beautiful ('For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright | Who art as black as hell, as dark as night'). Perhaps the most interesting development is the explicit triangulation of desire when the poet-narrator accuses the friend and mistress of being lovers ('But being both from me, both to each friend | I guess one angel in another's hell', where 'hell' is Renaissance slang for 'vagina').

Throughout there is smutty word-play ('spent', 'will', 'hell') and some misogynistic slut-shaming ('Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love | Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one') but the sonnet form is overwhelmingly conventional with little variation in prosody, content or poetic form.

So, am I glad that I've read these? Yes. But the individual sonnets and the sequence overall is a very poor cousin to the cleverness, narrative sophistication, variety, experimentation and sheer virtuosity of Astrophil and Stella.

[charlotte, · Rating 3 out of 5]

sonnet 129 🫶🏻

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally finished Romeo and Juliet in my Brit Lit class (thank God!) Oddly enough, when I was looking to escape Shakespeare, I found this book of his sonnets at a rummage sale. It was simply meant to be.

Here's the thing I don't like about Shakespeare. He goes on and on about the beauty of his love, but that's all he talks about. Is she only a pretty face? Does she have a sense of humor? Is she kind? Smart? Anything but beautiful. Though this doesn't diminish the beauty of his writing, I do wonder if Shakespeare ever knew the type of love that wasn't superficial. Somehow I doubt it.

There was one sonnet I loved, and it definitely stood out from the rest of them. Here it is:

“My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.”

I love this sonnet because Shakespeare's finally getting at a love with depth. His love isn't beautiful, isn't perfect, but this love is worth more than other types of love because it's real. The flaws make it real.

Nice book to skim at leisure. I guess that means I recommend.

[GoldGato · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be rather silly of me to review these Shakespearean poems. The language is magnificent, and I don't really get involved in the 'shadiness' of the Fair Youth. It's enough that I've had the joy of reading these eloquent demonstrations of love and yearning, one of those a-ha confirmations of life's beauty.

This specific volume is an oldie, being printed in 1901. I have almost killed it, resulting in bookcover surgery. The publishers included a lovely little glossary plus a preface to each work and fitted the book to smaller dimensions. A gem.

Book Season = Year Round (words are easy like the wind)

[Kiki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened along to this as Patrick Stewart read a sonnet a day to the world from this edition on Instagram. I followed along in my own old college Shakespeare book. Thank you, Sir Patrick! I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten to reading Shakespeare’s sonnets if not for you.

They were not quite what I expected, despite having studied them in college (we focused mostly on plays). And a few too many for comfort sounded like the poet was stuck in an abusive relationship. But they are brilliantly formed little jewels of poetry. And they do rather catch certain facets of the human experience.

[Nicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never thought much about Shakespeare, or really tried to investigate his writing beyond the plays I was forced to read, which is a shame. His sonnets are lovely, and some of them are supremely clever. I love the inversions in sonnet 130, for example, and the sting in the tail of sonnet 18, "shall I compare thee to a summer's day"...

[katerina · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5*

[Kyriakos Sorokkou]

Κριτική και στα ελληνικά στις βιβλιοαλχημείες


750 pages of Shakespearean language. It's almost a herculean labour.
My ocd was glad last year when on Shakespeare's day (April 23) I visited his Globe theatre in London and bought this book.

It took me ten days to finish it but for a subject like this it was a fast pace.

This volume contains all of Shakespeare's poetry. His two epic/narrative poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
Then we have an anthology of 20 poems mainly sonnets that was published in 1599 and was attributed to Shakespeare even though 5 of them are by Shakespeare, 11 of unknown authorship and the rest 4 to other poets including Christopher Marlowe.
Who was born 2 months before Shakespeare and died at the age of 29 producing only 6 plays and a few poems.
Shakespeare on the other hand, died at the ripe age of 52 with 39 plays and already an important playwright.

What made Shakespeare more well-known than Marlowe was not only his longer life and longer play production but also the fact that during the years of 1592/93 there was a plague epidemic which was the reason to shut off all theatres.
So the actor Shakespeare decided to spend his long free time writing plays.
So when in June of 1594 the theatres reopened they started producing his plays and from then on he was going to be the most well known playwright of all time.

Of course during the plague times along with the plays he was writing his two epic poems: Venus and Adonis with 1194 lines, and The Rape of Lucrece with 1855 lines.
The first poem tells the story of the passionate love (and lust let's not deny it) of Venus for the young beautiful Adonis.
To me her love for an almost underage Adonis felt like a rape from a milf/cougar.

Indeed Elizabethan poetry had none of the prudeness and the puritanical modesty of Victorian poetry. It would take at least 400 years for poetry to get rid of this black prude veil.

In the second poem we have a Roman aristocrat who as the title says is raped by Tarquinius and she commits suicide to save her name and atone her honour. Questionable act for today's standards.
Of course in the end we have the catharsis where we have the punishment of Tarquinius and his family.

After these two epic poems what follow are as I mentioned earlier the poetry anthology The Passionate Pilgrim and then probably the only poem by Shakespeare which is neither a sonnet or a narrative/epic one. It is a 67 lines poem that tells the love story between two birds; a phoenix and a turtle(dove).

Then we have the 154 sonnets of Shakespeare, and the collection ends with a narrative/bucolic poem of 329 lines, as well as 18 short poems and epitaphs attributed to Shakespeare in the 17th century.

Shakespeare's 154 sonnets are his most well known from his poetry. They were written between 1591-1604 and were published in 1609, and it's not known whether they were published with Shakespeare's permission or not.

126 of these sonnets are addressing a youth, sometimes giving an advice like father to son, sometimes with an homoerotic vibe, and some of them are about the youth's betrayal towards the poet by being seduced by the Dark lady. Some also have as their theme a rival poet.

Of course saying that this passion and love were bisexual or homosexual is a bit anachronistic since they didn't exist exactly as they exist nowadays.

Of course this is a long discussion that sometimes ruins the enjoyment of reading or listening to a poem.

All poems besides the sonnets have extensive footnotes where everything in the poem is analysed.
The sonnets have on the facing page their own extensive notes. Plus the 170 pages of introduction at the beginning, and the index at the end this is an ideal edition both for those who want to study Shakespeare's poetry in depth, and both for those who just want to enjoy it.

[Hanieh · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5

I've never actually just read Shakespeare's poems and sonnets for the sole purpose of reading them back to back specifically. Now that I have I don't think I can actually undo what it's done to my brain chemistry. He's so painfully human in his expressions, so smart and honest. I wish I was smart enough to recite these the way that I have some Persian poetry, at least if not by will then by repetition (which still shocks me because poetry in general is not my thing). I know in my heart that I am going to go back to this. Not like this though. But like picking it up and randomly read whatever that feels right. What I really appreciated about the Folger edition is annotation style. Not only it covers all the important bits, but it also has greate placement and font. I also found the biography, articles, essays and notes very helpful. It gave good insight on the social environment, the language and how everything came to be as they are now. A grand experience.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Excluding the two major narrative poems:

Snooze. It's not bad, just boring. These days only two kinds of people genuinely like these; those who can cope with Love and the Moon poetry, which, thematically, has been losing ground on my attention since I became an adult and those who are obsessed with Shakespeare's life, biographical and/or psychological, who were satirised up to the eyeballs by Oscar Wilde. I don't have that obsession.

The best part is the epitaphs, which are at least witty.

[Karin Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very interesting to read Shakespeare's sonnets in order. He starts out with a bunch of poems trying to convince beautiful virgins that it is their duty to have a child and not let their beauty go to waste (good one, Will 😉). By the end his view of love is bitter and he is harsh towards the women he speaks about, even saying he doesn't find them attractive anymore.

Sonnet 6
* Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair,
To be death's conquest and make worms thy heir.

Sonnet 152
* For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured eye,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

[aimee · Rating 2 out of 5]

the fact that i had to get a translator up to be able to understand this shows how great I am at english. my favourite sonnets were 18 and 81, solely because they reminded me of the bastille song "poet".
would I read these again? no. but does it make me look smart that I have read it? definitely, yes.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.

[Maude Levesque · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rip Shakespeare, you would have loved Cornelia Street, Ivy, Willow, and Long Live (Taylor's version)

[mar]

There is so much in this collection that I find it difficult to rate tbh, but let’s just say I get the Shakespeare hype (for the most part)

[Brady Meyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pros: The narrative poems of “Lucrece” and “Venus and Adonis” were the standouts to me. Lengthy, thorny, full of classical allusions, history, and mythology, but held my attention for their full length. In addition, a handful of Sonnets were really beautiful and are probably worth memorizing; my favorite of the set was Sonnet 60, with 12, 29, and 43 as honorable mentions.

Cons: The majority of the Sonnets are redundant or repetitive. The speaker himself doesn’t have any self worth and presents things in an extremely shallow and one sided view point, and the themes that show up over and over again (the destruction nature of time, the constant barrage of legal terms, finding truth in light and beauty) are far more interesting when encountered in the plays.

Do I regret going through this entire collection once? No. Will I do it again? Maybe, in a few years. For now, I’m happy enough to have taken a survey of the entire set and enjoyed the ones that spoke to me. Maybe in another five years more will call out to me and I’ll gain a deep appreciation of the cycle.

[Miles Hupert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean come on. He is revered for a reason, and his sonnets are no exception. The two halves work in perfect unison with each other as he works through his relationship with Mr W.H. a homoerotic affair analyzing his own prestige and the power of the written word by one as great as himself. Growing up my favorite poem was always Ozymandias, its perfect encapsulation of the power of the word through history enamored me, and now Shakespeare follows suit. The dark lady poems are equally direct and rude as they are grounded within complicated true love. So fun to read and honestly feels like finishing a tv show in how they are all connected and complete a full story.

[CH6 · Rating 5 out of 5]

shakespeare’s sonnets are lyrical and deeply emotional featuring poems about beautiful love as well as those that express sorrow and contemplation on life’s uncertainties :))

[Florence Ridley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Colin Burrow's edition of The Complete Sonnets and Poems is notable for its exhaustiveness. The introduction is well-written, interesting and convincingly summarised contemporary research. The footnotes are clear and helpful and the inclusion of miscellaneous writings attributed to Shakespeare in the eighteenth century was convincingly justified. Burrow's contributions to this edition were genuinely pleasurable to read.

I adore Venus and Adonis and struggle a little more with Lucrece (in this I am aligned with Shakespeare's contemporaries). The strange interlude where Lucrece projects her emotions onto the tapestry of the fall of Troy is fascinating and confusing, at once a brilliant work of fantasy ekphrasis and a major distraction from Lucrece's suffering.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Sonnets. Read together, the sequence offers something more than the individuals, some of which I had already studied. Having been a little disappointed by Astrophil and Stella , I was delighted to find that Shakespeare excels just as much among sonnet-writers as among playwrights.

The shorter poems were equally enjoyable to read. Frankly, Shakespeare is just quite a good writer and so his poems are pretty good. This edition framed them in the best possible way and featured insightful editorial additions, so I would consider it the best modern edit of Shakespeare I've personally encouuntered.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

My biggest complaint: Sometimes the footnotes seemed unnecessary and other times, when I would have liked a footnote, there was nothing.

In other words, this is an amazing book. Put together by Folger’s, this collection of Shakespeare’s non-theatrical work is buttressed by scholarship and illustrations to help explain both the time in which the sonnets and poems were written but also how they have been interpreted in the intervening centuries.

I read this book over several months, and I’m glad I took the opportunity to savor it. Lucrere, which I was finishing as the Weinstein scandal broke, was a somewhat bitter pill to swallow, but I still enjoyed it from a literary perspective. Highly recommended (and worth purchasing).

[Akiva ꙮ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started the morning off right being late to work because I had to text the group chat about Shakespeare's most bisexual sonnets

tl;dr:

20 - you're so fucking gorgeous and genderfucky and literally everyone wants to bone you, cunt joke, dick joke

19 - if my boyfriend gets older I will face god and walk backward into hell

130 - my girlfriend is a regular human lady with a regular human lady body AND I LOVE HER SO FUCKING MUCH AND I WILL FUCKING FIGHT YOU IF YOU SAY YOUR GIRLFRIEND IS PRETTIER YOU FAKE-ASS LYING BITCH

[Hannah Polley · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of Shakespeare's poems and sonnets in one volume. And even some poems that are attributed to Shakespeare but may not have been written by him.

It does show how remarkable Shakespeare was to be able to write so much poetry.

Probably one to dip in and out of rather than read all at once.

[Rich Christman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once you get over whatever trauma was wrought during high school or college regarding Shakespeare, revisit him as a poet. His love sonnets are truly some of the greatest ever penned, blowing much of modern poetry and lyricism out of the water in both technical skill and drama.

[Laura Clawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was onto something.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really excited about having finished this, and I'm also excited to say I came away from it with some desire to reread it and primed to further appreciate "Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare", which I am hoping to start soon.

I don't think I have to say the language is beautiful. I did highlight less than I anticipated, but the sonnets in their entirety were often gorgeous. I loved his emphasis on his ability to preserve his (often explicitly male) lover's beauty through his poetry. I could not get entirely behind the procreation sonnets, but I did find the persistence amusing. I also found the dichotomy between his praise of his male lover and his (rationalizing?) of his female one very entertaining. There is what might be described as an astronomical difference.

Before moving on to the poems, I have to say, this edition is a godsend in understanding the sonnets. It's not that they're horribly difficult. It's just that it's nice to have a little summary going into them. For me, it allowed me to better appreciate the language without worrying about whether I was missing the plot.

Some of the sonnets I enjoyed most: 63, 81, 88, 94, 105, 106, 113, 130, 138, and 144.

Enjoying the poems required jumping over the enormous hurdle that is their focus on rape. The poems read really well, and they have some beautiful, evocative lines, but nonetheless, it is sometimes difficult to fully enjoy them. I definitely enjoyed "Venus and Adonis" more, though I don't discount it is problematic. I liked the lighter tone. I liked the grief at the end. I liked the idea that this is a creation myth for why love is chaotic.

I don't know that I can say I enjoyed "Lucrece". I found the first part leading up to and rationalizing the rape to be pretty difficult to read, and of course, I hate the tragedy of her fate in the end. I liked reading her part more, and I think the part where she takes in the painting of the fall of Troy is brilliant. It's just a really, really dark, long poem. I do appreciate that it's almost entirely focused on the mental state of the two characters, though.

I got nothing from "The Phoenix and the Turtle".

I liked reading the modern perspective essays in the back. As I said, I loved the notes, particularly with the sonnets. I also really liked seeing the illustrations.

I'm pretty happy I purchased this edition and took the time to read it. If you're thinking about reading the sonnets and poems, this is a good way to do it.