Shakespeare's Sonnets

By William Shakespeare and Paul Werstine

A bestselling, beautifully designed edition of William Shakespeare’s sonnets, complete with valuable tools for educators.

The authoritative edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on the facing page of each sonnet
-A brief introduction to each sonnet, providing insight into its possible meaning
-An index of first lines
-Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the sonnets

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Aug 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781501150333

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably the most famous playwright to ever live. Born in England, he attended grammar school but did not study at a university. In the 1590s, Shakespeare worked as partner and performer at the London-based acting company, the King’s Men. His earliest plays were Henry VI and Richard III, both based on the historical figures. During his career, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays that reached multiple countries and cultures. Some of his most notable titles include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. His acclaimed catalog earned him the title of the world’s greatest dramatist.

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About this eBook

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Also, please keep in mind that Shakespeare wrote his plays and poems over four hundred years ago, during a time when the English language was in many ways different than it is today. Because the built-in dictionary on many devices is designed for modern English, be advised that the definitions it provides may not apply to the words as Shakespeare uses them. Whenever available, always check the glosses linked to the text for a proper definition before consulting the built-in dictionary.

THE NEW FOLGER LIBRARY

SHAKESPEARE

Designed to make Shakespeare’s great plays available to all readers, the New Folger Library edition of Shakespeare’s plays provides accurate texts in modern spelling and punctuation, as well as scene-by-scene action summaries, full explanatory notes, many pictures clarifying Shakespeare’s language, and notes recording all significant departures from the early printed versions. Each play is prefaced by a brief introduction, by a guide to reading Shakespeare’s language, and by accounts of his life and theater. Each play is followed by an annotated list of further readings and by a Modern Perspective written by an expert on that particular play.

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.

Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is a privately funded research library dedicated to Shakespeare and the civilization of early modern Europe. It was founded in 1932 by Henry Clay and Emily Jordan Folger, and incorporated as part of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, one of the nation’s oldest liberal arts colleges, from which Henry Folger had graduated in 1879. In addition to its role as the world’s preeminent Shakespeare collection and its emergence as a leading center for Renaissance studies, the Folger Shakespeare Library offers a wide array of cultural and educational programs and services for the general public.

EDITORS

BARBARA A. MOWAT

Director of Research emerita

Folger Shakespeare Library

PAUL WERSTINE

Professor of English

King’s University College at Western University, Canada

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of taking up Shakespeare, finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented as a resource for study, artistic exploration, and enjoyment. As a new generation of readers engages Shakespeare in eBook form, they will encounter the classic texts of the New Folger Editions, with trusted notes and up-to-date critical essays available at their fingertips. Now readers can enjoy expertly edited, modern editions of Shakespeare anywhere they bring their e-reading devices, allowing readers not simply to keep up, but to engage deeply with a writer whose works invite us to think, and think again.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exists to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

Michael Witmore

Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

Contents

Editors’ Preface

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: The Sonnets

Shakespeare’s Life

An Introduction to This Text

The Sonnets

Text of the Poems with Commentary

Sonnet 1

Sonnet 2

Sonnet 3

Sonnet 4

Sonnet 5

Sonnet 6

Sonnet 7

Sonnet 8

Sonnet 9

Sonnet 10

Sonnet 11

Sonnet 12

Sonnet 13

Sonnet 14

Sonnet 15

Sonnet 16

Sonnet 17

Sonnet 18

Sonnet 19

Sonnet 20

Sonnet 21

Sonnet 22

Sonnet 23

Sonnet 24

Sonnet 25

Sonnet 26

Sonnet 27

Sonnet 28

Sonnet 29

Sonnet 30

Sonnet 31

Sonnet 32

Sonnet 33

Sonnet 34

Sonnet 35

Sonnet 36

Sonnet 37

Sonnet 38

Sonnet 39

Sonnet 40

Sonnet 41

Sonnet 42

Sonnet 43

Sonnet 44

Sonnet 45

Sonnet 46

Sonnet 47

Sonnet 48

Sonnet 49

Sonnet 50

Sonnet 51

Sonnet 52

Sonnet 53

Sonnet 54

Sonnet 55

Sonnet 56

Sonnet 57

Sonnet 58

Sonnet 59

Sonnet 60

Sonnet 61

Sonnet 62

Sonnet 63

Sonnet 64

Sonnet 65

Sonnet 66

Sonnet 67

Sonnet 68

Sonnet 69

Sonnet 70

Sonnet 71

Sonnet 72

Sonnet 73

Sonnet 74

Sonnet 75

Sonnet 76

Sonnet 77

Sonnet 78

Sonnet 79

Sonnet 80

Sonnet 81

Sonnet 82

Sonnet 83

Sonnet 84

Sonnet 85

Sonnet 86

Sonnet 87

Sonnet 88

Sonnet 89

Sonnet 90

Sonnet 91

Sonnet 92

Sonnet 93

Sonnet 94

Sonnet 95

Sonnet 96

Sonnet 97

Sonnet 98

Sonnet 99

Sonnet 100

Sonnet 101

Sonnet 102

Sonnet 103

Sonnet 104

Sonnet 105

Sonnet 106

Sonnet 107

Sonnet 108

Sonnet 109

Sonnet 110

Sonnet 111

Sonnet 112

Sonnet 113

Sonnet 114

Sonnet 115

Sonnet 116

Sonnet 117

Sonnet 118

Sonnet 119

Sonnet 120

Sonnet 121

Sonnet 122

Sonnet 123

Sonnet 124

Sonnet 125

Sonnet 126

Sonnet 127

Sonnet 128

Sonnet 129

Sonnet 130

Sonnet 131

Sonnet 132

Sonnet 133

Sonnet 134

Sonnet 135

Sonnet 136

Sonnet 137

Sonnet 138

Sonnet 139

Sonnet 140

Sonnet 141

Sonnet 142

Sonnet 143

Sonnet 144

Sonnet 145

Sonnet 146

Sonnet 147

Sonnet 148

Sonnet 149

Sonnet 150

Sonnet 151

Sonnet 152

Sonnet 153

Sonnet 154

Two Sonnets from The Passionate Pilgrim

Longer Notes

Textual Notes

Appendix of Intertextual Material

Shakespeare’s Sonnets: a Modern Perspective by Lynne Magnusson

Further Reading

Index of Illustrations

Index of First Lines

Commentary

Sonnet 1

Sonnet 2

Sonnet 3

Sonnet 4

Sonnet 5

Sonnet 6

Sonnet 7

Sonnet 8

Sonnet 9

Sonnet 10

Sonnet 11

Sonnet 12

Sonnet 13

Sonnet 14

Sonnet 15

Sonnet 16

Sonnet 17

Sonnet 18

Sonnet 19

Sonnet 20

Sonnet 21

Sonnet 22

Sonnet 23

Sonnet 24

Sonnet 25

Sonnet 26

Sonnet 27

Sonnet 28

Sonnet 29

Sonnet 30

Sonnet 31

Sonnet 32

Sonnet 33

Sonnet 34

Sonnet 35

Sonnet 36

Sonnet 37

Sonnet 38

Sonnet 39

Sonnet 40

Sonnet 41

Sonnet 42

Sonnet 43

Sonnet 44

Sonnet 45

Sonnet 46

Sonnet 47

Sonnet 48

Sonnet 49

Sonnet 50

Sonnet 51

Sonnet 52

Sonnet 53

Sonnet 54

Sonnet 55

Sonnet 56

Sonnet 57

Sonnet 58

Sonnet 59

Sonnet 60

Sonnet 61

Sonnet 62

Sonnet 63

Sonnet 64

Sonnet 65

Sonnet 66

Sonnet 67

Sonnet 68

Sonnet 69

Sonnet 70

Sonnet 71

Sonnet 72

Sonnet 73

Sonnet 74

Sonnet 75

Sonnet 76

Sonnet 77

Sonnet 78

Sonnet 79

Sonnet 80

Sonnet 81

Sonnet 82

Sonnet 83

Sonnet 84

Sonnet 85

Sonnet 86

Sonnet 87

Sonnet 88

Sonnet 89

Sonnet 90

Sonnet 91

Sonnet 92

Sonnet 93

Sonnet 94

Sonnet 95

Sonnet 96

Sonnet 97

Sonnet 98

Sonnet 99

Sonnet 100

Sonnet 101

Sonnet 102

Sonnet 103

Sonnet 104

Sonnet 105

Sonnet 106

Sonnet 107

Sonnet 108

Sonnet 109

Sonnet 110

Sonnet 111

Sonnet 112

Sonnet 113

Sonnet 114

Sonnet 115

Sonnet 116

Sonnet 117

Sonnet 118

Sonnet 119

Sonnet 120

Sonnet 121

Sonnet 122

Sonnet 123

Sonnet 124

Sonnet 125

Sonnet 126

Sonnet 127

Sonnet 128

Sonnet 129

Sonnet 130

Sonnet 131

Sonnet 132

Sonnet 133

Sonnet 134

Sonnet 135

Sonnet 136

Sonnet 137

Sonnet 138

Sonnet 139

Sonnet 140

Sonnet 141

Sonnet 142

Sonnet 143

Sonnet 144

Sonnet 145

Sonnet 146

Sonnet 147

Sonnet 148

Sonnet 149

Sonnet 150

Sonnet 151

Sonnet 152

Sonnet 153

Sonnet 154

Editors’ Preface

In recent years, ways of dealing with Shakespeare’s texts and with the interpretation of his plays and poems have been undergoing significant change. This edition, while retaining many of the features that have always made the Folger Shakespeare so attractive to the general reader, at the same time reflects these current ways of thinking about Shakespeare. For example, modern readers, actors, and teachers have become interested in the differences between, on the one hand, the early forms in which Shakespeare’s plays and poems were first published and, on the other hand, the forms in which editors through the centuries have presented them. In response to this interest, we have based our edition on what we consider the best early printed version of a particular play, poem, or collection of poems (explaining our rationale in a section called An Introduction to This Text) and have marked our changes in the text—unobtrusively, we hope, but in such a way that the curious reader can be aware that a change has been made and can consult the Textual Notes to discover what appeared in the early printed version.

Current ways of looking at the plays and poems are reflected in our brief introductions, in many of the commentary notes, in the annotated lists of Further Reading, and especially in each edition’s Modern Perspective, an essay written by an outstanding scholar who brings to the reader his or her fresh assessment of the play, poem, or collection of poems in the light of today’s interests and concerns.

As in the Folger Library General Reader’s Shakespeare, which the New Folger Library Shakespeare replaces, we include explanatory notes designed to help make Shakespeare’s language clearer to a modern reader, and we hyperlink notes to the lines that they explain. We also follow the earlier edition in including illustrations—of objects, of clothing, of mythological figures—from books and manuscripts in the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. We provide a brief account of the life of Shakespeare and an introduction to the text itself. We also include a section called Reading Shakespeare’s Language, in which we try to help readers learn to break the code of Elizabethan poetic language.

For each section of each volume, we are indebted to a host of generous experts and fellow scholars. The Reading Shakespeare’s Language sections, for example, could not have been written had not Arthur King, of Brigham Young University, and Randal Robinson, author of Unlocking Shakespeare’s Language, led the way in untangling Shakespearean language puzzles and shared their insights and methodologies generously with us. Shakespeare’s Life profited by the careful reading given it by the late S. Schoenbaum. Our commentary notes in this volume were enormously improved through consultation of several of the more recent scholarly editions of the Sonnets. These editions are listed in our "Introduction to This Text." We, as editors, take sole responsibility for any errors in our editions.

We are grateful to the authors of the Modern Perspectives; to Peter Hawkins, Steven May, and Marion Trousdale for helpful conversations about the Sonnets; to the Huntington and Newberry Libraries for fellowship support; to King’s College for the grants it has provided to Paul Werstine; to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which provided him with a Research Time Stipend for 1990–91; to R. J. Shroyer of the University of Western Ontario for essential computer support; to the Folger Institute’s Center for Shakespeare Studies for its sponsorship of a workshop on Shakespeare’s Texts for Students and Teachers (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and led by Richard Knowles of the University of Wisconsin), a workshop from which we learned an enormous amount about what is wanted by college and high-school teachers of Shakespeare today; to Alice Falk for her expert copyediting; and especially to Steve Llano, our production editor at Washington Square Press, whose expertise and attention to detail are essential to this project.

Our biggest debt is to the Folger Shakespeare Library: to Michael Witmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, who brings to our work a gratifying enthusiasm and vision; to Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Library from 2002 until July 2011, whose interest and support have been unfailing and whose scholarly expertise continues to be an invaluable resource; and to Werner Gundersheimer, the Library’s Director from 1984 to 2002, who made possible our edition; to Deborah Curren-Aquino, who provides extensive editorial and production support; to Jean Miller, the Library’s former Art Curator, who combs the Library holdings for illustrations, and to Julie Ainsworth, Head of the Photography Department, who carefully photographs them; to Peggy O’Brien, former Director of Education at the Folger and now Director of Education Programs at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who gave us expert advice about the needs being expressed by Shakespeare teachers and students (and to Martha Christian and other master teachers who used our texts in manuscript in their classrooms); to Allan Shnerson and Mary Bloodworth for their expert computer support; to the staff of the Academic Programs Division, especially Solvei Robertson (whose help is crucial), Mary Tonkinson, Kathleen Lynch, Carol Brobeck, Liz Pohland, Sarah Werner, Owen Williams, and Daniel Busey; and, finally, to the generously supportive staff of the Library’s Reading Room.

Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Few collections of poems—indeed, few literary works in general—intrigue, challenge, tantalize, and reward as do Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Almost all of them love poems, the Sonnets philosophize, celebrate, attack, plead, and express pain, longing, and despair, all in a tone of voice that rarely rises above a reflective murmur, all spoken as if in an inner monologue or dialogue, and all within the tight structure of the English sonnet form.

Individual sonnets have become such a part of present-day culture that, for example, Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds) is a fixture of wedding ceremonies today, and Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day), Sonnet 29 (When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes), and Sonnet 73 (That time of year thou mayst in me behold)—to name only a few—are known and quoted in the same way that famous lines and passages are quoted from Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth. Yet it is not just the beauty and power of individual well-known sonnets that tantalize us, but also the story that the sequence as a whole seems to tell about Shakespeare’s love life. The 154 sonnets were published in 1609 with an enigmatic dedication, presumably from the publisher Thomas Thorpe: To The Onlie Begetter Of These Insuing Sonnets. Mr. W.H. Attempts to identify Mr. W.H. have become inevitably entangled with the narrative that insists on emerging whenever one reads the Sonnets sequentially as they are ordered in the 1609 Quarto.

The narrative goes something like this: The poet (i.e., William Shakespeare) begins with a set of 17 sonnets advising a beautiful young man (seemingly an aristocrat, perhaps Mr. W.H. himself) to marry and produce a child in the interest of preserving the family name and property but even more in the interest of reproducing the young man’s remarkable beauty in his offspring. These poems of advice modulate into a set of sonnets which urge the poet’s love for the young man and which claim that the young man’s beauty will be preserved in the very poems that we are now reading. This second set of sonnets (Sonnets 18–126), which in the supposed narrative celebrate the poet’s love for the young man, includes clusters of poems that seem to tell of such specific events as the young man’s mistreatment of the poet, the young man’s theft of the poet’s mistress, the appearance of rival poets who celebrate the young man and gain his favor, the poet’s separation from the young man through travel or through the young man’s indifference, and the poet’s infidelity to the young man. After this set of 109 poems, the Sonnets concludes with a third set of 28 sonnets to or about a woman who is presented as dark and treacherous and with whom the poet is sexually obsessed. Several of these sonnets seem also to involve the beautiful young man, who is, according to the Sonnets’ narrative, also enthralled by the dark lady.

The power of the narrative sketched above is so strong that counterevidence putting in doubt its validity seems to matter very little. Most critics and editors agree, for example, that it is only in specific clusters that the sonnets are actually linked, and that close attention to the sequence reveals the collection to be more an anthology of poems written perhaps over many years and perhaps to or about different men and women. Most are also aware that only about 25 of the 154 sonnets specify the sex of the beloved, and that in the century following the Sonnets’ publication, readers who copied individual sonnets into their manuscript collections gave them titles that show, for example, that sonnets such as Sonnet 2 were seen as carpe diem (seize the day) poems addressed To one that would die a maid. Such facts, such recognitions, nevertheless, lose out to the narrative pull exerted by the 1609 collection. The complex and intriguing persona of the poet created by the language of the Sonnets, the pattern of emotions so powerfully sustained through the sequence, the sense of the presence of the aristocratic young man and the seductive dark lady—all are so strong that few editors can resist describing the Sonnets apart from their irresistible story. (Our own introduction to the language of the Sonnets, for example, discusses Sonnet 2 as a poem addressed to the beautiful young man, despite the fact that the sex of the poem’s recipient is not specified and despite our awareness that in the seventeenth century, this extremely popular poem was represented consistently as being written to a young woman.) Individually and as a sequence, these poems remain more powerful than the mere mortals who read or study or edit them.

For a very helpful exploration of the Sonnets as they are read today, we invite you to read A Modern Perspective written by Professor Lynne Magnusson of the University of Toronto and contained within this eBook.

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: The Sonnets

The language of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, like that of poetry in general, is both highly compressed and highly structured. While most often discussed in terms of its images and its metrical and other formal structures, the language of the Sonnets, like that of Shakespeare’s plays, also repays close attention to such basic linguistic elements as words, word order, and sentence structure.

Shakespeare’s Words

Because Shakespeare’s sonnets were written more than four hundred years ago, they inevitably contain words that are unfamiliar today. Some are words that are no longer in general use—words that the dictionaries label archaic or obsolete, or that have so fallen out of use that dictionaries no longer include them. One surprising feature of the Sonnets is how rarely such archaic words appear. Among the more than a thousand words that make up the first ten sonnets, for instance, only eleven are not to be found in current usage: self-substantial (derived from one’s own substance), niggarding (being miserly), unfair (deprive of beauty), leese (lose), happies (makes happy), steep-up (precipitous), highmost (highest), hap (happen), unthrift (spendthrift), unprovident (improvident), and ruinate (reduce to ruins). Somewhat more common in the Sonnets are words that are still in use but that in Shakespeare’s day had meanings that are no longer current. In the first three sonnets, for example, we find only used where we might say peerless or preeminent, gaudy used to mean brilliantly fine, weed where we would say garment, glass where we would say mirror, and fond where we would say foolish. Words of this kind—that is, words that are no longer used or that are used with unfamiliar meanings—will be defined in our linked commentary notes.

The most significant feature of Shakespeare’s word choice in the Sonnets is his use of words in which multiple meanings function simultaneously. In line 5 of the first sonnet, for example, the word contracted means bound by contract, bethrothed, but it also carries the sense of limited, shrunken. Its double meaning enables the phrase contracted to thine own bright eyes to say succinctly to the young man not only that he has betrothed himself to his own good looks but that he has also thereby become a more limited person. In a later line in the same sonnet (Within thine own bud buriest thy content [s. 1.11]), the fact that thy content means both (1) that which is contained within you, specifically, your seed, that with which you should produce a child, and (2) your happiness enables the line to say, in a highly compressed fashion, that by refusing to propagate, refusing to have a child, the young man is destroying his own future well-being.

It is in large part through choosing words that carry more than one pertinent meaning that Shakespeare packs into each sonnet almost incalculable richness of thought and imagery. In the opening line of the first sonnet (From fairest creatures we desire increase), each of the words fairest, creatures, and increase carries multiple relevant senses; when these combine with each other, the range of significations in this single line is enormous. In Shakespeare’s day, the word fair primarily meant beautiful, but it had recently also picked up the meaning of blond and fair-skinned. In this opening line of Sonnet 1, the meaning blond is probably not operative (though it becomes extremely pertinent when the word fair is used in later sonnets), but the aristocratic (or upper-class) implications of fair-skinned are very much to the point (or so argues Margreta de Grazia; see Further Reading), since upper-class gentlemen and ladies need not work out of doors and expose their skins to wind and sun. (The negative

Reviews for Shakespeare's Sonnets

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Zeer verfijnd en klassiek. De sonnetten zijn wat weerbarstig zonder uitleg, maar enkele ervan zijn echte pareltjes.

[jorgecarvajal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Music to mine ears.

[wassilissa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeares Dramen kennt die ganze Welt, heute noch werden sie gespielt. Auch seine Sonette sind bekannt, etwa Sonett 18: „Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Soll ich dich einem Sommertag vergleichen?)“ oder 66 „Tired with all these, for restful death I cry“. Ich finde diese Ausgabe sehr schön, da sie die englische und die deutsche Sprache gegenüber stellt. Und Shakespeares Englisch ist einfach schön zu lesen, weil es rhythmisch und melodisch ist: „ To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still…”(Sonett 104)Es ist recht interessant, im Nachwort zu lesen, dass Shakespeares Sonette deutlich mehr als seine Dramen Autobiografisches zu transportieren scheinen. So ist die Identität von „Mr. W. H.“, dem „Erzeuger der Sonette“, nie aufgeklärt worden. Der Wikipdia-Artikel zu den Sonetten ist sehr ausführlich: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeares_Sonette

[abigailadams26 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare's Sonnets, those 154 beautifully-worded, nimbly-constructed poems, are not works with which one is ever "done." This collection of gems is something to revisit from time to time, and cliched though it may be, it yields some new understanding at every reading. I cannot say that I "know" these poems, though I have read each of them a number of times. Perhaps the two with which I am most familiar are #116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments,... which features prominently in the film, Sense and Sensibility. Alas - the power of media... The other, and my all-time favorite, is #29: When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes / I all alone beweep my outcast state... This latter has always appealed to the more depressive side of my character (those who love Christmas carols will be unsurprised to learn that my favorite verse of We Three Kings is the one with all the sorrow, sighing, bleeding and dying).It is not a coincidence that these two, Sonnets 116 and 29, are also the only two which I have committed to memory. Perhaps it is owing to the fact that I can call them to mind at any given moment, that I have spent my time playing with the pleasant rhythm of their lines, that I feel I understand them best? Memorization is not a pedagogical tool much in favor these days, but although I am no proponent of learning anything by rote, I sometimes wonder if memorizing might not be a wonderful way of improving mental discipline, and even, furthering eventual understanding...As for editions, of which there are no shortage, I'm afraid I do not own one of those sensible, scholarly versions, with helpful notes. No, I have a gift edition, put out by the British publisher, Tiger Books. It is arranged with one sonnet per page, and decorated with original color illustrations (mostly in the way of floral motifs) by Ian Penney, as well as thirty Elizabethan and Jacobean miniatures. Very pretty, and not terribly useful. But being the resourceful scholar I am, I have provided myself with a copy of Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, whose 672 pages and CD should make all clear that was previously muddled.In short: I am by no means done with these poems, and when the time becomes available (I amuse myself sometimes with thoughts such as these), I intend to study them in greater detail. If you, gentle reader, have not yet had the pleasure of perusing these exquisite pieces... what can I say? Get thee to a library or bookstore with all haste.

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The sonnets are great but the readings... I've heard better. Where the reader puts more feeling into it.

[lyzadanger · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My biggest piece of advice to first-time readers (like I just was): take your time. Maybe not as much time as I took, if you don't want--I read two or three sonnets at a sitting, so it took me months to finish the entire collection. I was able to discover my own favorite sonnet, which isn't one of the standard favorites (#44). I do like the Folgers series of Shakespeare (I like the notes on the facing page), but I also consulted other references (mostly online) as I read.

[neverstopreading-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare's poems deserve to be read and studies, but they also deserve to be heard. Simon Callow has a wonderful voice, but I wish the number of the sonnets was announced as he read them.

[krystlelow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What can I say? If you love Shakespeare, you're definitely gonna love this one.

All his Sonnets in one book, along with detailed explanation notes to help with the meanings of each sonnet. Loved it!

[pathogenik-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well, some of the verses that I managed to grasp were genius.
p.s.: I did not read the commentaries, because enough is enough haha

[lcoale1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As someone who really grapples with understanding Shakespeare, I found his sonnets easier to comprehend than the works I'd previously read without the guidance of a goddess English teacher (so, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and The Tempest). I was also reminded of the Twilight saga with every sonnet that I could comprehend (probably 78% of them; bed-time reading was a bad idea). I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

[mothwing-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are poems which are life rafts and serve much the same purpose, and this collection is full of them. They're a big part of who I am and where I am today.

[comfypants · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A chore to read. Shakespeare's skills with language are wasted on expressing inane ideas.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I studied a few of Shakespeare's sonnets in high school, but hadn't read any of the others until now. I think the teachers/textbook editors picked the cream of the crop for high school students – XVIII (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?), LXXIII (That time of year thou mayst in me behold...), CXVI (Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments). While a few others stood out for me, many of them struck me as just so-so, with over-repetitive themes.The sonnets don't seem to have been collated in a random order. There is a logical progression from one sonnet to the next. Some sonnets echo the previous sonnet, while others are a continuation of thought. As a whole, I prefer the Dark Lady sonnets to the rest of the collection. I was losing interest in the “you're so perfect” theme, so the Dark Lady sonnets were a welcome change. I'm glad I read the collection once. I'm not sure it's something I'll do again, or at least not until I've read all of the plays.

[mjharris_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

De Vere at his absolute best, ripping off sugar'd specimens to amaze and delight his elizabethan court."Would he had blotted 'a thousand..." but these are keepers!

[porian_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare is smooth! I'm going to have to use some of those lines on my next victim, ahem, girlfriend. What girl won't fall for lines like, "And in some perfumes is there more delight/ than in the breath that from my mistress reeks." Come on. You can't beat that.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Love transcends all boundaries and the language with which that love is populated by Shakespeare is transcendant.

[vicarofdibley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

the best classic i love shakespear

[whicker_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic poetry at its best. What more can be said.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful, intelligent, lyrical, romantic, clever, bitter, amusing, sorrowful -- the gamut in 14 lines at a time. Pure genius.

[fearless2012 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Certainly I do not admire this guy for the conceit of his audience, although I was curious to see if the affectation of the style would match the conceit it provoked, or whether it was rather different and undeserving of it, that is, unworthy of the negative association. Certainly the poetry is I think the better part of it, preferable to the plays, which are bloody and gloomy. (I got a 'complete works' of William S., but mostly for the poetry.) Many of them are about the most infamous wars, and even the ones that go by the reputation of being romantic are generally gory and distasteful.... (indeed, the comedy is rather somber).... I think that the reputation rather supports itself beyond a certain point; people read it to dip into the conceit, I think, of the people who read it. Part of the conceit is for things historical, and William S.'s chronological position, so early in the post-medieval period, benefits him, I think, it's the oldest (and, therefore, the best?) stuff that is generally intelligible in the original. Even more than that, though, the reputation of it being a sort of quasi-sacred Canon of super-highly valued works.... the reputation supports the reputation. It's what people are used to thinking. [And this conceit really does not require much knowledge; it's a common thing, albeit one that may be unimproved by much learning.] But if there's something in it besides egotistical war, it must be in the poetry. Surely alot of it is just over-rated because it's part of the Canon. And yet the sonnets have at least the stated intention of facilitating fertility, and not just the more egoic desires of old greybeards who know about the kings of Britain. But there's the question of how well these poems actually serve love, in real life. We know that people say this or that about it all, but what real utility does this sort of thing have for real love in a man's life?For example, consider the following exchange, which I always thought was an indirect reference to this (i.e., William S.): "'.... and envied me Jane's beauty. I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane-- one does not often see anybody better-looking. It is what everybody says. I do not trust my own partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was a gentleman at my brother Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-law was sure that he would make her an offer before we came away. But, however, he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.''And so ended his affection,' said Elizabeth impatiently. 'There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!' 'I have been used to consider poetry as the *food* of love,' said Darcy. 'Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.'"~Pride and Prejudice, chapter 9. ..... I hope that my criticism will not be mistaken for (gasp) communistic radicalism, (although no one would mistake William S. for the voice of the people). Although I suppose in general I prefer the poetry/music of the 20th century to that of the pre-18th century (pre-Classical, on the timeline of classical music). The Beach Boys, for example, wrote alot of good love poetry/music, e.g., "Forever" from 1970. Fancy 'baroque' or classical poetry/music, like Mozart or Coleridge, can be nice too, but the very early period like William S. I don't like so well. [*over*-fancy]. For one thing, there's the spelling, and the language, and so on. Certainly with William S. there's a feeling of historicism, quite often, with a crusty accumulation of time-- Roman times and medieval times, piled on top of each other. (Coleridge is rather newer-- the Age of Discovery.) In alot of the William S. stuff, you get that-- the post-medieval (pre-modern) take on Roman times.....And what is the effect of the poetry itself? Does it have the power to create a desire to fulfill the literal advice? Or does it make it merely an affectation, to be spoken but not believed? What is its character-- is it a true lover, or a false friend? [Can any lovely feeling survive the transition to sonnet-making, and still be felt?]All that I can say is that I read it all without knowing any of those feelings so disdained by those who call themselves wiser. I actually felt them quite repetitive, and more in love with language than any use of it. It's gaudy verse, and often more impressed with the necessity of love than any ability to impress it....[Even when he speaks of love, he does not confine himself to his subject, but introduces words and images that smack of other things; he speaks of highfalutin things, elevated, various, and uncertain, and then says, "love", and "love" again.] I've actually read simple folk poetry, ballads, which I like better than this. Some of them are good, some are bad, all are accessible enough, and none of them have the lying intricacies of William S. [And maybe he was wrong to use a form so foreign to the language; it doesn't sound natural.] ..... The speech is too guarded to be the "food of love". (Instead of enabling vivid images and all that, the formula only cuts him off from clear communication.) [And it's certainly not all about love; he goes off and on and on about Time and Death, as if to say, 'Ha haha, I know about what truely matters.' But this is a conceit. Only the form remains constant, the actual object of the writing doesn't stay true.] If he is a wit, he has used it only for affected speech. ..... And although I can generally find my way to the meaning, it feels more the formula than anything. All rhyme has a form, but his is rather rigid. If you read it long enough, you start to wonder what it's like not to be so weirdly abstract.... (and then remember the straightforward tales of bloody tyrants) [And speaking of tyrants-- he calls time one, and who would tell their lover, as he does, 'Soon you'll be old, but you'll always have this note', that says, what, 'Soon you'll be old....'?.... Try living in the moment, William, if this is what happens when you don't.] I wonder at the sincerity of it all; he somewhat condescends to feel. ........ At any rate, the strawberries and cream of Wimbledon could well go on without William S., and I'm not really of the spirit to support that self-serving scholarship that delves into all that. Although I'll admit its not the worst thing I've ever read; it's not monstrously cynical, in its original form; it's merely ill-suited to its stated purpose. [.... In fact, I'd go so far to say that Mr. S. is *not* the most over-rated writer of all the world, since there are others.... but, let's not talk of that.] [Sometimes a rhyme pleases, but even at its best, there is an emotional distance I feel which blocks him off.... there's a lordly silence, as though he once drew close, then suddenly turned away.] (7/10)

[therebelprince · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A stunning edition. Incredibly dense but rarely arrogant! Love it.