Alongside Spenser, Sidney and the early Donne, Shakespeare is the major poet of the 16th century, largely because of the status of his remarkable sequence of sonnets. Professor Cousins » new book is the first comprehensive study of the Sonnets and narrative poems for over a decade. He focuses in particular on their exploration of self-knowledge, sexuality, and death, as well as on their ambiguous figuring of gender. Throughout he provides a comparative context, looking at the work of Shakespeare »s contemporaries. The relation between Shakespeare »s non-dramatic verse and his plays is also explored.