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Shakespeare: Poems
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Shakespeare's first original poems were not dramatic. He was the creator of a peculiar species of narrative composition, which achieved an immediate popularity. Venus and Adonis, a beautiful but sensuous and pagan poem, "the first heir of his invention," was published in 1593. It was reissued in five several editions between the years 1593 and 1602; while the Rape of Lucrece, which so extols the virtue of the heroine as to seem a foil to the first poem, during nearly the same time appeared in three editions.
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Shakespeare's sonnets are by far his most important nondramatic poetry. They were first published in 1609, although many of them had certainly been circulated privately before this, and it is generally agreed that the poems were written sometime in the 1590s. Scholars have long debated the order of the poems and the degree of autobiographical content.
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Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare's narrative poem in six-line stanzas, was published by Richard Field (1561 - 1624). The poem was dedicated to Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton (1573-1624). This dedication refers to the author's "unpolisht lines" and contains the typically fawning language of a commoner addressing a nobleman in the hope of obtaining, or retaining, their patronage in exchange for poems dedicated to the recipient.
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