Giroux, Robert

New York. 1982. Atheneum. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0689112602. 334 pages. hardcover. The portrait on the front of the jacket, by Nicholas Hilliard, is of the third Earl of Southampton, and is reproduced by Permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum. keywords: Shakespeare Literary Criticism . FROM THE PUBLISHER - ‘When Shakespeare wrote, Two loves I have,' reader, he was not kidding.' This shrewd critical observation of John Berryman's serves as a rubric for The Book Known as Q, Robert Giroux's new study of the 1609 quarto volume which he calls ‘one of the most famous, and mysterious, books in the history of publishing.' Why did its publication meet with almost total silence? Why was there no second edition? Why did it go underground for one hundred years? Was Shakespeare horrified by its publication, as W. H. Auden was convinced? Robert Giroux approaches these questions as a book publisher himself, a publisher of poets, and a longtime student of Shakespeare. The result is a provocative, absorbing and informative account of the remarkably late appearance (seven years before Shakespeare's death) of a book containing some of the greatest poems in the English language. Giroux looks on the dichotomy between the circulation of the poems in manuscript by 1598, and the odd history of Q eleven years later, as an important key to the puzzle of the sonnets. He presents a striking array of arguments for an early dating of the poems, with the exception of one sonnet. He exposes the limitations of that school of critics who condemn biographical interpretation and view the sonnets solely as literary exercises. ‘Poets, after all, are not pure spirits,' he protests. ‘From my experience, I would say they are all too human.' The book contains colorful portraits of Shakespeare's patron, the third Earl of Southampton; John Florio, the Italian-language tutor who was a spy in the earl's household during the period of his patronage of Shakespeare; and Thomas Thorpe, the impecunious publisher of the sonnets, who enjoyed writing elaborate dedications like the one in Q. There is a fascinating analysis of the sonnet-play, Love's Labour's Lost, whose characters are obsessed with sonnet-writing, whose dialogue contains many parallels to words and phrases in the sonnets, and whose dark-haired Rosaline, with whom Berowne falls in love, is so much like the dark woman of the sonnets. Giroux shows that the problem of the Rival Poet sonnets is twofold: (a) several minor rivals and (b) a single important rival who wrote ‘great verse.' In ‘The Love in the Sonnets' Giroux deals with this complex, difficult and important aspect of the poems candidly and in depth. His analysis of individual sonnets is fresh and original; he sees them not as literary exercises but as the work of a genius at the beginning of his career, at a time, as Colette wrote, when ‘Shakespeare wrote without knowing that he would become Shakespeare.' The Book Known as Q will inevitably make readers return to the sonnets themselves. Illustrated with photographs, documents, and a facsimile of the 1609 text of Q. inventory #4146 ISBN: 0689112602.