书名：The Sonnets 十四行诗

作者：William Shakespeare 威廉•莎士比亚
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：1999
语种：英文 
ISBN：9780451527271
商品尺寸：10.6 x1.8 x 17.3 cm
包装：简装
页数：272 （以实物为准）

莎士比亚十四行诗大约创作于1590年至1598年之间，其诗作的结构技巧和语言技巧都很高，几乎每首诗都有独立的审美价值。莎士比亚在运用这个诗体时，极为得心应手，主要表现为语汇丰富、用词洗练、比喻新颖、结构巧妙、音调铿锵悦耳。而其擅长的是后两行诗，往往构思奇诡，语出惊人，既是全诗点睛之作，又自成一联警语格言。
The Sonnets《十四行诗》为Signet Classics推出的英文原版诗歌集，收录莎士比亚全部154首十四行诗，另附154首开头句索引表。本书由William Burto编辑，W. H. Auden作序，内容完整无删减，书本小巧便携。

Our Signet Classic Shakespeare Series was extensively revised in 1998. We offer the best of everything—unforgettable works edited by eminent Shakespeare scholars, comprehensive notes on the text, an essay on Shakespeare’s life and times, source material, critical commentaries, extensive bibliographies, and footnotes. And there’s more—Grow with the times by including both historical and thoroughly contemporary critical commentary on such issues as feminist, political, and theatrical interpretations of the plays—with recent full-length essays by such respected scholars as Frank Kermode, Carolyn Heilbrun, Michael Goldman, Linda Bamber, and many others.
—Provide more bibliographic listings and more up-to-date and relevant listings of pertinent books and articles in the Suggested Reference Section than the competition offers.
—Feature essays on the Performance or Stage History of each play, written by Sylvan Barnet. 

威廉•莎士比亚（William Shakepeare，1564~1616），是英国文艺复兴时期伟大的戏剧家和诗人。一生共创作37部戏剧，154首十四行诗，两部长诗和其他诗歌。他的作品是人文主义文学的杰出代表，对后代作家影响深远，在世界文学史上有极其重要的地位。莎士比亚出生在英格兰沃里克郡埃文河畔斯特拉特福镇一个富裕市民家庭，曾在当地文法学校学习。13岁时家道中落辍学经商，18岁结婚，几年以后去伦敦谋生。当过剧院的打杂工、演员和编剧等。1597年在家乡购置了房产，1616年在家乡病逝。莎士比亚文学创作的主要成就是戏剧，按时代、思想和艺术风格的发展，可分为三个时期：第1时期（1590~1600年），是莎士比亚人文主义世界观和创作风格形成时期，共写了9部历史剧和2部长诗。其中为人所熟知的有《理查三世》（1592）、《罗密欧与朱丽叶》（1595）和《威尼斯商人》（1597）。第2时期（1601~1607年），是莎士比亚文艺思想成熟、艺术上达到高峰的阶段。这一时期创作了不朽的四大悲剧：《哈姆雷特》（1601）、《奥赛罗》（1604）、《李尔王》（1606）、《麦克白》（1606）。第3时期（1608—1612年），是莎士比亚的创作晚期，作品由悲剧转向传奇剧，带有明显的乌托邦式的空想主义色彩。反映了他的人文主义理想与客观现实之间的尖锐矛盾，以及他力求两者和谐的心态。主要作品有《辛白林》（1609）、《冬天的故事》（1610）和《暴风雨》（1611）。莎士比亚戏剧的艺术特色是题材典型、情节生动、语言丰富、人物个性鲜明。他从民间和古典作品中汲取营养，融入自己独特的见解，把作品锤炼得炉火纯青。马克思称莎士比亚为“人类极伟大的天才之一”。恩格斯盛赞其作品的现实主义精神与情节的生动性、丰富性。莎士比亚的作品几乎被翻译成世界各种文字。

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born at Stratford upon Avon in April, 1564. He was the third child, and eldest son, of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. His father was one of the most prosperous men of Stratford, who held in turn the chief offices in the town. In December, 1582, Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway, a farmer’s daughter; their first child Susanna was baptized on May 6, 1583, and twins, Hamnet and Judith, on February 22, 1585. Little is known of Shakespeare’s early life; but it is unlikely that a writer who dramatized such an incomparable range and variety of human kinds and experiences spent his early manhood entirely in a country town. There is one popular theory that he fled from Stratford because he was in trouble for deer stealing, another that he was for some time a schoolmaster. 
From 1592 onwards the records are much fuller. In March, 1592, the Lord Strange’s players produced a new play at the Rose Theatre called Harry the Sixth, which was very successful, and was probably the First Part of Henry VI. In the autumn of 1592 Robert Greene, the best known of the professional writers, as he was dying wrote a letter to three fellow writers in which he warned them against the ingratitude of players in general, and in particular against an “upstart crow” who “supposes he is as much able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes Factotum is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.” This is the first reference to Shakespeare, and the whole passage suggests that Shakespeare had become suddenly famous as a playwright. 

Shakespeare: An Overview
  Biographical Sketch
  A Note on the Anti-Stratfordians, Especially Baconians and Oxfordians
  The Shakespeare Canon
  Shakespeare’s English
  The Sonnets
Introduction
The Sonnets
Textual Note
Commentaries
  William Empson:They That Have Power
  Hallett Smith: From Elizabethan Poetry
  Winifred M. T. Nowottny: Formal Elements in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Sonnets 1-6
  Helen Vendler: Sonnet 116

Suggested References
Index of First Lines

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle’s compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

SONNET 154

The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire 
Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d;
And so the general of hot desire 
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm’d.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by, 
Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual, 
Growing a bath and healthful remedy 
For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,
   Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
   Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.