Includes index

Shakespeare the Poet -- Venus and Adonis -- Publication and Date of Composition -- Literary Milieu -- Lucrece -- Publication and Date of Composition -- The Argument, Sources, and Politics -- Reading (in) Lucrece -- Rape and Consent -- The Passionate Pilgrim -- 'Let the bird of loudest lay' -- Shakespeare's Sonnets -- Publication and Circulation -- Date and Sequence -- Reading the Sonnets -- A Lover's Complaint -- Date and Attribution -- The Poem and its Context -- Poems Attributed to Shakespeare in the Seventeenth Century -- 'Shall I die?' -- A Funeral Elegy -- Editorial Procedures -- Venus and Adonis -- Lucrece -- The Passionate Pilgrim -- 'Let the Bird of Loudest Lay' -- Shakespeare's Sonnets -- A Lover's Complaint -- Poems Attributed to Shakespeare in the Seventeenth Century.