Thank you to Jane Kingsley-Smith for offering an introduction to sonnets 81-154:
In case you missed it, here is Jane’s general introduction to the sonnets:
Jane Kingsley-Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. She is the author of three books: Shakespeare’s Drama of Exile (Palgrave 2003), Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (CUP, 2010), and, most recently, The Afterlife of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (CUP, 2019). She has also edited Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost for Norton, and the tragedies of Webster and Ford for Penguin. You can hear her further thoughts on the Sonnets in a series of podcasts recorded for the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Many thanks to my friend Joey Bianco of Whim Wham for the animated video elements.
Thank you again! She is insightful, interesting, and approachable. I loved the fact that her favorite is 116 – which is mine. But also, that she wished she liked one of the cooler and more obscure ones. That was a great comment.
Are her Folger podcasts on the Sonnets part of the Shakespeare Unlimited series?
I’m not sure, Tad, sorry!
I really appreciated the detailed examination of just three sonnets, rather than an attempt to give a broad overview of so many. To hear an expert analyse and explain such differently focussed poems gives me a way of approaching others in the collection. Very interesting. Thank you.