"An approachable and indispensable guide to Shakespeare's sonnets Shakespeare's sonnets are the greatest single work of lyric poetry in English, as passionate, daring, intimate, and moving as any love poems we may encounter. And yet, they are often misunderstood--as W. H. Auden remarked, "more nonsense has been talked and written, more intellectual and emotional energy expended in vain, on the sonnets of Shakespeare than on any other literary work in the world." Ideas of Order instills pleasure in this extraordinary verse, revealing an underlying narrative within the 154 poems that illuminates the work--providing a guide that inspires a new understanding of this complex masterpiece. The Elizabethan scholar and former Harvard University president Neil L. Rudenstine makes a compelling case for the existence of a dramatic arc within the work through an expert interpretation of distinct groups of sonnets in relationship to one another.The sonnets show us a poet in turmoil who falls for a young man who returns his affections--and the love is utterly transformative, binding him in such an irresistible way that it survives a number of heartbreaks. The poet and young man are equally attracted to a "dark lady," and both become enmeshed with her in an affair of lust and betrayal. Rudenstine's intimate reading explores the relationship between major groups of poems: the expressions of love, the transgressions, the longings, the jealousies, and the reconciliations. Along with his expert critical narrative, Ideas of Order includes all of Shakespeare's sonnets. This enlightening book is an invaluable companion for Shakespeare neophytes and experienced readers alike"--

Drawing on modern historical scholarship, rather than speculation, this book links the plays and poetry closely to the life of their author and sets the whole chronicle against the vivid tapestry backdrop of Shakespeare's world and time.

"Alexander Nemerov is one of the greatest readers of American visual culture. This book has the revelatory power that only wide-ranging curiosity and true independence of mind can achieve." Richard H. Brodhead President of Duke University and author of Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America ; "A benchmark in the writing of art history and in studies of the Civil War, Acting in the Night occupies a category unto itself. It uniquely immerses the reader in a holistic experience of the Civil War and shows Nemerov as a cosummate stylist in the field of American art history."Kathleen Pyne author of Modernism and the Feminine Voice ; "This is a work of criticism that borders on poetry, a brilliant and extremely original book that invites us to rethink to the artistic world we study."Julia Reinhard Lupton author of Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life ; What can the performance of a single play on one night tell us about the world this event inhabited so briefly? Alexander Nemerov takes a performance of Macbeth in Washington, D.C., on October 17, 1863--with Abraham Lincoln in attendance--to explore this question and illuminate American art, politics, technology, and life as it was being lived. Nemerov's inspiration is Wallace Stevens and his poem "Anecdote of the Jar,"in which a single object organizes the wilderness around it. For Nemerov, that evening's performance of Macbeth reached across the tragedy of civil war to acknowledge the horrors and emptiness of a world it tried and ultimately failed to change. --Book Jacket