The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse: 1509-1659 (Penguin Classics)

A great compilation

The book arrived in excellent shape and only gently used (I'll feel less inclined to feel bad if I leave it open). Thank you!

A big selection of poetry from the greatest period of English poetry.

I was assigned this book in an English Renaissance literature class. This collection provides a fascinating insight into the English Renaissance. There are selections by the normal poets: Shakespeare, Spenser, etc. There are also selections by female poets, including Elizabeth I. I learned so much from this book in terms of literature, culture, and life. If you are interested in this time period, or in the British Isles, this book is essential!

This splendid edition offers a salutary corrective to the false view of the English literary Renaissance we see in Shakespeare scholarship. Why would this be? Because Shakespeare scholars must blind themselves to important truths about the English Renaissance in order to prop up their implausible theory that the semi-literate Merchant of Stratford William Shakspere wrote the Shake-speare canon.So let me highlight a few of the ways in which this anthology corrects some systematic distortions imposed by traditional Shakespeareans. The Preface and Introduction alone are worth the price of the book. They are written by Oxford’s David Norbrook (and are drawn from his 1984 book Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance). Might the author of the works of Shake-speare have used a pen name because he was an aristocrat? No, say the Shakespeareans—they claim the alleged “stigma of print” is a myth. Norbrook, however, writes that “Many leading poets in the period…circulated their verse almost entirely in manuscript. Print still had to endure a social stigma in a society strongly marked by an aristocratic disdain for commerce.”Shakespeareans deny that the Sonnets have anything to do with the poet himself. He might have been writing poems for a bisexual patron. Norbrook tells us that “the Renaissance is…rich in a poetry of personal address…Renaissance poets were distinguished from their predecessors by a heightened awareness of subjectivity and individuality.” Further, “the sonnet was a particularly sensitive instrument for exploring personal experience in a society which still disapproved of too much individualism, and sonnets must have seemed at times as raw and personal as the work of modern ‘confessional poets.’”Norbrook realizes that Shakespeare is showing undeniable sexual interest in the Fair Youth in Sonnet 20, in the very lines that homophobic readers interpret as reassuringly heterosexual: “one thing to my purpose nothing” in the Fair Youth’s sexual anatomy “is probably reinforced by a play on ‘nothing’ as ‘female genitals’ “ [i.e., the poet is alluding to using the Fair Youth as a “bottom”].Several of Edward de Vere’s early signed poems are in the many editions of the Elizabethan anthology of song lyrics, The Paradise of Dainty Devises. De Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) was described as having a professional level of musical accomplishment. How is that relevant, you ask? Because Renaissance poets “had the visionary aim of making English words dance in a lost harmony.” Words could create their own music, as “The pioneers of Renaissance opera and song were trying to regain a pristine unity of words and music.”“[Philip] Sidney was excited by the prospect that scholars were at last discovering the secret of the metrical basis of the Hebrew Psalms after centuries of neglect.” Shakespeareans acknowledge that the Bible is one of Shakespeare’s primary literary sources, echoed hundreds of times in his works. But they failed to identify the primary translation of the Psalms that most influenced him. De Vere’s “manicules” and other annotations in his Whole Book of Psalms led to the discovery that this Elizabethan “hymnal” (with printed music) is a previously unrecognized source for many passages in Shakespeare.Shakespeareans base their absolute certainty that “Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare” partly on Ben Jonson’s prefatory material to the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. But Norbrook joins Jonson scholars who freely acknowledge that “honest Ben” was capable of writing with “baffling obliqueness” [as when he spelled the pen name as “Shake-Speare,” a form he used exclusively for invented names in his own 1616 Folio of plays and poems].Norbrook’s commitment to scholarly integrity stands as a rebuke to the special pleading, cherry-picking of evidence, and circular reasoning that lie at the rotten core of the Stratfordian authorship theory.

Came in with pages falling out of the spine. The notes inside are appreciated but I feel like every day a page falls out. Be clear about what condition the book is in next time.

This is the best anthology I know of the period, with other contenders out of print (unless there are new ones I don't know about). The most challenging thing is probably that the poems are left, as much as possible, in their original language, spelling, etc. But there are things to like about that, too, i.e. that, in a period when such things as spelling had not been regularized, there are tools a poet might have that differ from what one has in a language that is more settled. I.e. with what a modern poet has called "the Elizabethan care for the sound of syllables," how one might develop near rhymes and sight rhymes (and the bulk of poetry of this period is rhyming poetry) is multiplied.One true gem in this anthology, not found in all, is Sir Walter Ralegh's "The 21th: and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia." I think this is one of the great poems of the period, yet, because it was discovered somewhat more recently, it's not yet nearly as well know as it should be.I understand one reviewer's concern that perhaps an organization by author might have been easier to fathom, but the organization by theme makes sense to me, too, and they are the key themes of the period, and no matter, the contents and indexing are so good that it is easy to find any poem in the book for whatever reason one wants to read it. I've been reading in and through and around the book for a year now, and I love it.

This book arrived as promised, and with a personal touch. The sender enclosed a personalized thank you card, which was very thoughtful. It's these small gestures that make for a nice purchasing experience. Thank you.

very nice

I've already gradauted with an English degree and am no longer even studying in the field.So - somewhat strangely - I bought this book of verse to read for pleasure. Even after three years of a degree, whilst I'd covered a relatively wide range of material from the period, this book leaves no stone unturned in selecting verses from the Renaissance.From major poets such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell, Herbert and Donne etc to slightly minor figures such as Southwell, Campion, Denham and even Elizabeth I, the entire spectrum is covered. What is great about this volume is that poems are arranged by topic/theme. So all the ones about love are stuck together, religion too and 'topographical verse' etc. It makes the anthology effortless and easy to dip into, with at least a vague idea of what you're looking at; at the same time, if one were studying a certain theme or genre, then this arrangement would be even more invaluable.Considering that I spent a similar amount on the Arden collection on Shakespeare's sonnets, to get an anthology of verse from this golden age which is so thorough and well edited for just over a tenner is remarkable. This is one book which, even if left in the cupboard for a couple of years, will continue to deliver utility and enjoyment for decades to come.

I will carry this book with me forever more

A very scholarly book, wide ranging and heavily annotated, too heavily perhaps. And some poems are included which are of historical rather then literary value. But I shall need to come back to this book many times.

Book was not inspected thoroughly by me as it was bought for someone else. Appeared a little grubby but it will serve its purpose.