Naming Thy Name: Cross Talk in Shakespeare's Sonnets

In a true work of alchemy, Elaine Scarry brilliantly synthesizes poetry, history, and biography to answer the question that has been asked about Shakespeare's sonnets for four hundred years: Who was Shakespeare's beloved youth? Naming Thy Name lays bare Shakespeare's devotion to a beloved whom he not only names but names repeatedly in the microtexture of the sonnets, in their architecture, and in their deep fabric. Here, over the course of many poems, the two poets in conversation, in love, speaking and listening, writing and writing back.