The Introduction argues that the absence of any extensive study of the Sonnets’ afterlife has led to various critical misapprehensions. They have by no means always been admired or loved, but at the same time they have an extensive and unbroken reception history which precedes Edmond Malone’s reprinting of the Quarto in 1780. The Introduction explores the implications of Malone’s bipartite division into Sonnets for a Fair Youth and those for a Dark Lady, and argues that this has had a detrimental effect on modern understandings of the Sonnets, as well as alienating us from centuries of readers, poets and critics who did not hold to this division. Finally, the Introduction demonstrates how the ‘canon’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets has changed radically over four hundred years, encouraging us to consider the contingency of their reputation as individual lyrics.

The mid to late seventeenth century is usually considered as representing an almost total lack of Sonnet appreciation, often blamed on John Benson’s 1640 volume, Poems, which disrupted the sequence, interwove it with lyrics from The Passionate Pilgrim, and joined Sonnets together into larger units. This chapter explores how the Sonnets thrived in Caroline manuscripts (particularly Sonnets 2 and 106), and the ways in which Benson tried to harness this elite status for Cavalier readers, and make amends for the Sonnets’ omission from the First Folio. The chapter re-examines the ways in which Sir John Suckling and John Milton read the Sonnets, and argues for their sustained Royalist associations.