It is a rare thing in English Renaissance scholarship to have
recovered, in the later part of the 20th century, a crucial and
previously un-noted source for so commented-upon a body of texts as
Shakespeare's Sonnets, but Kent Hieatt did exactly that in his 1983
PMLA article, "The Genesis of Shakespeare's Sonnets: Spenser's Ruines
of Rome: By Bellay", a piece which argued in subtle detail, and
entirely persuasively, for the strong influence of Spenser's early
translations of Du Bellay's "Antiquitez de Rome" -- so obsessed with
the depredations and wastes of time -- on Shakespeare's sonnet
sequence. It changes the way one reads the poems. That is something
worth remembering and honoring.
Ken Gross
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