peare, His Mind and Art. The Arden Shakespeare:
introductions by Chambers, Wyatt, Boas, etc. Editions of the plays by
Rolfe, Brandes, and Hudson. Winter: Old Shrines and Ivy. Sherman: What
is Shakespeare? (chapters on Cymbeline and Winter's Tale). W. B.
Carpenter: Religious Spirit in the Poets (chapter on the Tempest).

As this is the last program in which Shakespeare's plays are taken up in
detail, the important subject might be discussed of the relation of the
plays to the author's own life and mental development. (See Dowden's
book.) Special study should be made of the exquisite songs in which the
last three plays are particularly rich. Hark, Hark, the Lark! and Fear
No More, from Cymbeline, Jog On and When Daffodils Begin, from Winter's
Tale, and Where the Bee Sucks, from the Tempest, should be sung or
read.

VII--SONNETS AND OTHER POEMS

1. _Venus and Adonis_--Early experiment in narrative verse. The story
founded on Ovid, with medieval alterations of the legend. Character of
the theme acceptable to the Renaissance spirit, but impossible to-day.
Correctness of the text.

2. _The Rape of Lucrece_--Story of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. Legend
unaltered by the poet. Lucrece, the model of conjugal fidelity in the
Middle Ages. Who was the Earl of Southampton, to whom the poem was
dedicated? What did the other poets of Shakespeare's time think of these
early poems?

3. _Shorter Poems_--A Lover's Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim, and The
Phoenix and the Turtle. Shakespeare's part in the second and his
indignation at the use of his name for the whole. The "unsolved enigma"
of the last.

4. _The Sonnets_--The origin of the sonnet form in Italy. The plan of
the series. Comparison of the collection with Wordsworth's sonnet
sequences, Mrs. Browning's Sonnets, and Tennyson's In Memoriam. The
problem of W. H. Read the Sonnets, 18, 22, 33, 116.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--W. J. Rolfe: Venus and Adonis, and Other Poems.
Sidney Lee: introductions to the several poems. Israel Gollanez:
Shakespeare's Sonnets. Edward Dowden: Shakespeare's Sonnets. Parke
Godwin: New Study of the Sonnets of Shakespeare.

The most interesting problem about the sonnets is whether or not they
are a revelation of Shakespeare's own experience and views of life, or
are wholly imaginative. On this point read from Wordsworth, Scorn Not
the Sonnet, and Browning's House, in which the two poets take opposite
views. For a full and most interesting discussion see