Introduction
Section I: “This Powerful Rhyme”
Chapter 1: Mirrors of Courtesy
Chapter 2: Educating the Courtier
Chapter 3: Love–Or Literary Credential?
Chapter 4: In The Shadow of Abundance
Chapter 5: Dedicated Words
Chapter 6: He That Buys Must Sell
Chapter 7: Thy Truth-Telling Friend
Chapter 8: From Form to Feeling
Section II: “A Man Right Fair”
Chapter 9: Before Homosexuality
Chapter 10: The King Loved Him Well
Chapter 11: Marriages and Men
Chapter 12: Eternal Lines: Marriage Or Poetry?
Chapter 13: Being Your Slave
Chapter 14: Friendship and its Flatteries
Chapter 15: But Did They Have Sex?
Section III: “A Woman Coloured Ill”
Chapter 16: Gynerasty
Chapter 17: Saucy Jacks
Chapter 18: Weaker Vessels
Chapter 19: A Reproach of Their Own
Chapter 20: The Black Mistress: A Renaissance Common Place
Chapter 21: More Perjured I?
Chapter 22: The Expense of Spirit
Chapter 23: Fair is Foul
Chapter 24: Sonnet 20: A Reprise
Section IV: “So Long Lives This”
Chapter 25: The Sonnets Today
Chapter 26: From “Sweet Boy” to “Sweet Love”
Chapter 27: Piteous Constraint to Read Such Stuff
Chapter 28: A Lover and A Man
Chapter 29: The Science of Sonnets
Chapter 30: Wilde Sonnets
Chapter 31: Love Poetry At Last