Published as a Slipcase Set by Quaternary Imprint | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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in four volumes
 Volume 1 demonstrates how Shakespeare structured his Nature based philosophy into the Sonnets of 1609. It shows how he systematically interlaced his natural logic with a numerological pattern to present his comprehensive and consistent philosophy in a unique combination of poetry and argument. Volume 2 examines each of the 154 sonnets line by line to show that the Sonnet philosophy is the basis for their meaning. It further reveals the prejudice upon which the traditional emendations to the 1609 edition are based. Volume 3 analyses Shakespeare's four longer poems and five of his plays to show that they can only be understood from the vantage of the Sonnet philosophy. Volume 4 features an open letter on the shared logic of Marcel Duchamp and Shakespeare and then, in a series of essays, considers why significant thinkers have failed to understand Shakespeare's works. | |||
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 Slipcase Cover Slipcase Back Slipcase Top |
Slipcase and general specifications
The four volume slipcase set is 148 x 210cm (A5 format). The slipcase is 24oz case board covered with 128gsm gloss laminated artpaper. The four volumes are stitchbound in 260gsm paperback and printed on 80gsm Thai woodfree paper. Volumes 1 to 4 have 584 pages, 384 pages, 496 pages, and 296 pages respectively. Volume 1 incorporates an 80 page facsimile of the complete Shakespeare's Sonnets of 1609. Volume 2 has individual facsimiles of the 154 sonnets to accompany the sonnet commentaries. Volumes 1, 2 and 4 have indexes. Volume 1 has a 50 page glossary with over 130 significant concepts, terms and names. The slipcase set has five ISBNs. On the exterior of the slipcase: 0-476-01587-1. On the volumes in slipcase: Volume 1: 0-476-01583-9, Volume 2: 0-476-01584-7, Volume 3: 0-476-01585-5, Volume 4: 0-476-01586-3. Note:William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy was funded by a substantial grant from the Taranaki Electricity Trust and by a grant from the Fred and Eunice Rodie Trust.
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Front Cover Short Contents Preface Introduction Index Back Cover |
Volume 1
Volume 1 presents evidence and argument to show that Shakespeare deliberately structured and numbered his philosophy into the 154 sonnets he published as Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609. By examining the logical and numerological relation of the 154 sonnets as Nature to the division into sequences of 28 Mistress sonnets and 126 Master Mistress sonnets, Volume 1 demonstrates that the Sonnets articulate the logical conditions for any mythic expression including Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare sets out the natural logic of the sexual dynamic of female and male in Nature as the basis for the logic of the mind. By appreciating that the mind is conditioned by natural logic he is able to create plays and poems of mythic depth without the inconsistencies of a literal belief in biblical or other mythologies. He shows that the erotic underpinning of all mythologies is a logical consequence of the derivation of the mind through the sexual process. In the period from the 1580s to 1609, when Shakespeare conceived and then developed his philosophy in a set of sonnets, he gradually gave his natural logic a precise formulation. In the 1600s he most likely arranged the set into the numerological relationships that conform to his rigorous logic, and added the patterns for music and time. Consequently, Volume 1 reveals the significance of the long debated Dedication.
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Front Cover Contents Introduction First Sonnet Index Back Cover |
Volume 2
Volume 2 takes the philosophy of the whole set of 154 sonnets with its mythically structured sequences to show that every line and every word of each sonnet conforms precisely to the logic of the parent philosophy. Or to put it another way, Volume 2 confirms that the philosophy Shakespeare developed very early in his career as a playwright and poet is evident in every aspect of the sonnets, some of which he wrote in the 1590s and then revised and structured in the 1600s for publication in 1609 as Shakespeare's Sonnets. The line by line analysis of the 154 sonnets using their inherent philosophy provides the first ever appreciation of the way in which Shakespeare wrote sonnets or modified earlier ones to express the various elements of his natural logic. The increase sonnets, the poetry and increase sonnets, the truth and beauty sonnets to the Master Mistress and the beauty and truth sonnets to the Mistress unfailingly consider the sexual dynamic, the logic of writing, and the logic of the human mind. When the individual sonnets are viewed from their inherent philosophy the prejudice toward particular sonnets on the basis of taste is removed and the sixty or more emendations made to the original by commentators since Malone in 1790 are shown to be necessary only if the sonnets are approached from the inverted logic of the Christian/Platonic tradition.
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Front Cover Contents Introduction Venus & Adonis Back Cover |
Volume 3
Volume 3 begins the process of considering all Shakespeare's plays and poems from the vantage of the Sonnet philosophy. The nine plays and poems featured represent the development of his philosophy from early attempts to articulate its natural logic in the long poems Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, through the only play of his own devising, Love's Labour's Lost, to the short poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, to the “problem play” Measure for Measure and then the poem included with the Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint. To round out the demonstration that only the Sonnet philosophy provides a complete insight into Shakespeare's works there are commentaries on the tragedy Macbeth, the history play Henry VIII, and another of the so-called problem plays Twelfth Night. Examining the plays and poems from the vantage of their inherent philosophy avoids the traditional cul-de-sacs such as the authorship issue, the attribution of parts of plays to other dramatists, and the thousands of emendations and deletions made in ignorance of the Sonnet philosophy. Over the next few years commentaries will appear on the other 32 plays and individual editions will be published featuring the facsimile edition of a play from the 1623 folio with its Sonnet based analysis. Each will show that Shakespeare's Nature/female based philosophy corrects millennia of male driven prejudice.
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Front Cover Contents Preface Duchamp Essay Index Back Cover |
Volume 4
In Volume 4 the Duchamp letter explains how the combination of the work of four philosophic thinkers enabled an insight into Shakespeare's philosophy. The rigorous biology of Charles Darwin, the language based philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the deeply symbolic poetry of Stephane Mallarmé, and the mythic logic in the art of Marcel Duchamp each provide a component that the comprehensive and consistent philosophy of the Sonnets coordinates and completes. Volume 4 includes ten essays on recent thinkers, each unavoidably aware of Shakespeare's status in the canon but none able to appreciate the Sonnet philosophy. The essays show how their own work was compromised by an inability to determine Shakespeare's Nature based logic, and how their attitude to Shakespeare was compromised by their failure. In some essays two or more thinkers are considered together because their professional differences reflect on their common difficulty in plumbing Shakespeare's philosophy. Four essays compare Sigmund Freud/Carl Jung, James Joyce/T. S. Eliot, Stephen Booth/Helen Vendler, and Friedrich Nietzsche/Ludwig Wittgenstein, four essays consider George Lakoff/Mark Johnson, Thomas Jefferson, Germaine Greer, and Riane Eisler, and two essays examine further the contributions and limitations of Marcel Duchamp and Stephane Mallarmé.
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