Sonnets (Vol. 62) | Neal L. Goldstien (essay date 1969)
Neal L. Goldstien (essay date 1969)
SOURCE: “Money and Love in Shakespeare's Sonnets,” in Bucknell Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, December, 1969, pp. 91-106.
[In the following essay, Goldstien explores the way in which Shakespeare associates money, love, and art in his sonnets. The critic advocates a balanced interpretation of Shakespeare's money imagery, noting that the poet uses monetary terms to both wound and to praise, and that this underscores society's ambiguous attitude toward wealth.]
This essay concerns the conjoining of money and love, and, peripherally, the conjoining of money and art in the sonnets of William Shakespeare. Nearly one-quarter of the sonnets touch in one way or another on the question of money, an all-inclusive term which I use to cover imagery of treasure, of coins, of usury, of commerce, of various other business transactions, and the like.1 There are overlappings, of course. One would be falsifying...
[The entire page is 6328 words long]
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