Speech and Performance in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays

David Schalkwyk offers a sustained reading of Shakespeare''s sonnets in relation to his plays. He argues that the language of the sonnets is primarily performative rather than descriptive, and bases this distinction on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin. In a wide-ranging analysis of both the 1609 Quarto of Shakespeare''s sonnets and the Petrarchan discourses in a selection of ...