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Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered; And in Part Rearranged With Introductory Chapters, Notes, and a Reprint of the Original 1609 Edition
Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered And in Part Rearranged With Introductory Chapters Notes and a Reprint of the Original 1609 Edition Author:William Shakespeare General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1899 Original Publisher: Longmans, Green, and co. Subjects: English poetry Drama / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Drama / Shakespeare Literary Criticism / Shakespeare Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be... more » typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 15 ) CHAPTER III. THE REV. EDMOND MALONE. Edmond Malone [1741 -- 1812] published in 1780 the Poems of Shakespeare as a supplementary volume to Johnson and Steevens' 1778 edition of the Plays, and with this book, which appears 171 years after the original quarto, we have the first serious attempt at textual emendation and intelligent critical notes. Steevens was quite correct in saying, as already quoted, that Malone was the only intelligent editor of the Poems of Shakespeare ; indeed so far as the Sonnets are concerned he might have gone further and said that he was their only editor -- for a mere reprint such as those of Lintott and Steevens can hardly claim to be called an edition. By waiving this, Malone was the first writer to publish an edition of the Sonnets which shows the instincts of a scholar and a gentleman. Granted that he was a shade too conservative, as for example in sonnets 85 (65, Q) line 10, where he rejects the emendation " quest" for " chest," though he tells us that it had occurred to him, and that Theobald had also proposed it. Or again in sonnet 23 line 9, where he retains " Oh let my books be then the eloquence," when "looks" is obviously right. Malone tells us that this emendation has been suggested to him by a correspondent whose suggestions he has marked with the letter C, and who as I have said is generally believed to have been Capell. He also rejects the emendation " griefs strength" for "griefs length," ...« less