Introduction

Section I: "This Powerful Rhyme"

Chapter 1: Mirrors of Courtesy

Chapter 2: Educating the Courtier

Chapter 3: Love--Or Literary Credential?

Chapter 4: In The Shadow of Abundance

Chapter 5: Dedicated Words

Chapter 6: He That Buys Must Sell

Chapter 7: Thy Truth-Telling Friend

Chapter 8: From Form to Feeling

Section II: "A Man Right Fair"

Chapter 9: Before Homosexuality

Chapter 10: The King Loved Him Well

Chapter 11: Marriages and Men

Chapter 12: Eternal Lines: Marriage Or Poetry?

Chapter 13: Being Your Slave

Chapter 14: Friendship and its Flatteries

Chapter 15: But Did They Have Sex?

Section III: "A Woman Coloured Ill"

Chapter 16: Gynerasty

Chapter 17: Saucy Jacks

Chapter 18: Weaker Vessels

Chapter 19: A Reproach of Their Own

Chapter 20: The Black Mistress: A Renaissance Common Place

Chapter 21: More Perjured I?

Chapter 22: The Expense of Spirit

Chapter 23: Fair is Foul

Chapter 24: Sonnet 20: A Reprise

Section IV: "So Long Lives This"

Chapter 25: The Sonnets Today

Chapter 26: From "Sweet Boy" to "Sweet Love"

Chapter 27: Piteous Constraint to Read Such Stuff

Chapter 28: A Lover and A Man

Chapter 29: The Science of Sonnets

Chapter 30: Wilde Sonnets

Chapter 31: Love Poetry At Last

Coda

Reviews

Choice Magazine

"The most realistically balanced, generally honest guide to these remarkable poems that this reviewer has encountered."  read more  

Jonathan Goldberg, Emory University

"This is the book I would recommend to any novice and even to more experienced readers approaching the sonnets." read more

Nichole Lehman,

Chantilly High School

"This book will come in handy when I teach the sonnets." read more

Katherine Duncan-Jones, editor of the Arden Sonnets,
Oxford  University

"Matz proves himself to be a sharp and subtle analyst of individual Sonnets."
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