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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the collection of poems published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe: Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets, \u201cnever before imprinted\u201d. Yet, while some of Shakespeare's other poems and many of his plays were often reprinted in his lifetime, the Sonnets were not a publishing success. They had to make their own way, outside the main canon of Shakespeare\u2019s work: wonderful, troubling, patchy, inspiring and baffling, and they have appealed in different ways to different times. Most are addressed to a man, something often overlooked and occasionally concealed; one early and notorious edition even changed some of the pronouns.

With:

Hannah Crawforth\nSenior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at King\u2019s College London

Don Paterson\nPoet and Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews

And

Emma Smith\nProfessor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson