Route 66 and No End: Further Fortunes of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66

Abstract

At the SHINE-conference in Murcia in 1999 I claimed that sonnet 66 has been largely disregarded by Anglo-American critics whereas, in continental Europe, it has been frequently used as a medium of protest in crucial political situations. In the light of more recent findings I will revise this claim and draw attention to English poets and novelists from the Romantic period to Modernism reworking or working with the sonnet with a political thrust.