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VENUS AND ADONIS, LUCRECE,

SONNETS, ETC.

EDITED, WITH NOTES,

BY

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, LITT. D.,

EDITOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS, SELECT POEMS OF MILTON, GRAY,
GOLDSMITH, WORDSWORTH, BROWNING, ETC.

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1348711

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The Editor,

ENGLISH

CLASSICS.

EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, LITT. D.

Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 56 cents per volume; Paper, 40 cents per volume.

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PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

Copyright, 1890, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

PREFA C E.

Cer

SHAKESPEARE'S Poems have generally received less attention from editors and commentators than his plays, and no thoroughly annotated edition of them has been published in this country. It has been my aim to treat them with the same thoroughness as the plays. The 1599 edition of Venus and Adonis is collated for the first time, so far as I am aware, though it was discovered more than twenty years ago. tain of the recent editors do not appear to know of its existence. In The Passionate Pilgrim, the pieces which are certainly not Shakespeare's are transferred from the text to the Notes. Most of the others are of doubtful authenticity, but I give Shakespeare the benefit-if benefit it be of the doubt. A Lover's Complaint and The Phonix and the Turtle are now generally conceded to be his.

In the Sonnets, I have been under special obligations to Professor Dowden's excellent editions. I have not, however, drawn at all from Part II. of the Introduction to his larger edition, which condenses into some seventy-five pages the entire literature of the Sonnets. For the critical student this careful résumé answers a double purpose: as a bibliography of the subject, directing him to the many books and papers that have been written upon the Sonnets, if he is moved to read any or all of them; and as a compact and convenient substitute for these books and papers, if he wants to know their gist and substance without the drudgery of wading through them.

For the present volume all portions of my earlier editions of Venus and Adonis, etc. and the Sonnets have been carefully revised, and several pages of new matter, giving the substance of the latest researchesspecially interesting and important in the case of the Sonnets-have been added to the Notes.

The text of all the poems is given without omission or expurgation. Cambridge, August 12, 1890.

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