An exemplary volume, ideal for classroom use and filled with suggestive pointers toward new directions in scholarship on the sonnets by a well-balanced assembly of leading scholars. The volume’s subtitle could not be more apt, in that the essays collectively exhibit both the “state” of methodologies in circulation and the “play” therein that finds new ways of navigating the literary corpus. The editors’ lucid introduction is ideally paired with Heather Dubrow’s afterword, which points up the individual and collective merits of the contributions with laser-like precision.

SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

Overall, the collection contains some first-rate scholarship by established researchers and as a snapshot of current work, demonstrates that Shakespeare’s sonnets continue to elicit dynamic literary criticis. [...] the stylistic attentiveness of the volume, and the concern with the sonnets’ relations with other texts and genres, means that the collection will be of interest to scholars and students not only of Shakespeare and Renaissance literature but also of poetic form and language across periods.

Journal of the English Association