William Shakespeare

The response of one writer to the work of another can be doubly illuminating.

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet whom he or she has particularly admired. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their opening remarks, the selectors offer intriguing insights into their own work, as well as providing an introduction to some of the most influential poets of the literary canon.

In this volume, Ted Hughes has culled from Shakespeare’s plays speeches that stand out as poems in their own right and placed them alongside favourite sonnets and songs. Covering a range of topics from identity, truth, and mortality to love and marriage, Shakespeare achieves with these works the same degree of astute perception, sensitivity, and universality as do poets whose works are intended from their inception to stand on their own. Hughes’s selection and commentary underscore Shakespeare’s genius as a poet as well as a dramatist.