William Shakespearen sonetit: nautintojen ajan aarre

by William Shakespeare, Kirsti Simonsuuri (Translator)

William Shakespearen (1564-1616) Sonetit kuuluu länsimaisen rakkauslyriikan ehdottomaan huippuun. Sonettien tyyli on intiimiä puhetta rakastetulle ja rakastetuille. Teos on runouden historian suuri arvoitus. Se on kiehtonut lukijoita, runoilijoita, tutkijoita ja rakastavaisia neljän vuosisadan ajan.
Suomennokseen on liitetty johdanto sekä sonettien yksityiskohtaiset selitykset. Niissä pohditaan tekstihistorian ja suomentamisen ongelmakohtia sekä analysoidaan soneetteja temaattisesti.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Shakespeare, Fiction, Literature, Romance, Plays

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1609

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII (abridged)

You're hot.
But not as hot as this poem.

Shakespeare's Sonnet CXVI (abridged)

I'll love you even when you are sixty four
Or my name's not Heather Mills.

Shakespeare's Sonnet XCIV (abridged)

Stay cool man. Peace.
Like, flower power, y'know?

[Alok Mishra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shakespeare has almost become synonymous to drama, we all know the fact. However, the lyrical quality that he was born with (even his life was lyrical, wasn't it?) bestowed immense poetry to his plays and perhaps, those plays led to the sonnets we are singing even today. Is there any sonnet sequence in the world which is as popular as Shakespeare's is? I don't think so. Academic people may debate upon the authenticity and ramifications of the sonnets' interpretation, but the people who love literature and lover poetic pieces will keep enjoying the writing and extract pure pleasure out of the pure poetry produced by Shakespeare in his sequence. Amazing!

[Sean Barrs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favourite Shakespeare sonnet:

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The poetry is beautiful. It is so sad and full of melancholy, as the speaker laments his place in life and the greed of the state. He is poor and miserable whilst Kings exist in luxury and splendour. Heaven doesn’t answer. God doesn’t care. The speaker is depressed as a lack of money is associated with a complete lack in richness of feeling and attitude. Emotional bankruptcy is the feeling the sonnet captures with such splendour. And I love it.

But then, to make it better, it reverses in on itself in the final few lines. The speaker remembers his love and conquers his jealously. He remembers his love for his “state” which is a pun on the idea of nation. He remembers his love for his king and his lord and realises that such wealth will not bring the fulfilment he seeks. In these few lines is a powerful journey, a journey of discovery and truth. It’s an incredible piece of writing.

And here's a version of it sung by the very talented Rufus Wainwright: Sonnet 29



So that’s my favourite sonnet and there’s many beautiful examples in here of how incredible poetry can be. Simply put, it doesn’t really get any better than this.

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[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Review
William Shakespeare wrote hundreds of sonnets over three decades, mostly from the 1580s through 1610. I'm assuming most everyone has read a few of his sonnets, given they are usually required reading in high school. There is something to love in every single one of them. There is something to be confused at in every single of them. No one can deny his talent. Whether you enjoy rhymes or prefer just the beauty of the words, the lines definitely create images in your mind of what he's writing about. Love, pain, anger, frustration, beauty, sadness... it's all there. I enjoy them because it's a momentary breath of something new and different. I'm not much into poetry, though I find at times, it's the best reading of all... when you see a full character and his/her thoughts and actions in as little words as possible. Everyone should read a few, find the grouping that work for you, and just get lost in the words for a few hours. See if it makes you think differently about things. It gets a 3 because as good as they are, they are still short poems that sometimes hit the mark and sometimes do not -- so while there are a few that warrant a 5, there are as many than warrant a 1.

About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.

[Amit Mishra · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no fundamental issue to call this book a great one. Shakespeare is really different from other poets. The style and composition of words in a beautiful pattern makes him look beyond the ordinary league.
His sonnets secretly deliver manifold messages. From joy to the seriousness.

[Georgia Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Cut these words, and they would bleed," I want to gasp. What Montaigne did for Emerson, Shakespeare does for me.

His sonnets weren't taught when I was in school. It was all about the plays. Those were reduced to who did what and when and usually involved a knife. Easy to correct short answers reduced Shakespeare to the police blotter in a small town paper. "Disturbance on Sunday night. Officer called and dispersed youths." It is just as well that the sonnets were not taught, not to be cut up like that.

My first impression was how accessible they are. I understood more than I supposed I would. The language should have been mystifying. Instead it felt, to quote Emerson again, "vascular and alive." The lines like veins pulse with emotion and variance. Now I know why we speak of the body of a poem. These have flesh and bone. Rhythms reminded me of the flow of curves. Their beat, fast or slow, is how bodies move. Rhyme is the repeat of sounds that are uttered. Intimate and loud at once. This is lovemaking poetry. Read them as you would play songs to recollect, or commit again, that madness called love.

[Jonathan O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️


William Shakespeare pictured with wife, Anne Hathaway, who, awkwardly, is not the subject of his famous sonnets.


I read the Sonnets and ‘A Lover’s Complaint’ in ‘The Arden Shakespeare – Complete Works’ so, strictly speaking, I’ll be reviewing the portion of that much larger book which contains these works. The difference, I believe, is that this individual edition, under which I’m reviewing, has incredibly detailed textual notes and commentary; the Complete Works has merely an introduction.


There are 154 sonnets in the collection and they are not completely random but, in fact, have a kind of narrative order. Sonnets 1-126 are mainly addressed to “the fair youth”, a man younger and of higher social standing than the poet and Sonnets 127-152 to “The Dark Lady”, an unfaithful mistress whose other lovers, in a saucy twist, include the young man! The last 2 sonnets, 153-154, stand independent of the rest and are based on the traditional theme of Cupid and Diana.

The first 17 sonnets, known as ‘The Procreation Sonnets’ are basically Shakespeare playing overbearing mother-in-law, urging the young man to find a fair lady and reproduce while in his prime in order to preserve his illustrious beauty; lamenting time’s tyranny on all things young and mortal. He throws everything but the kitchen sink at this effort; he shames the young man for depriving a woman of reproducing with him, uses musical metaphor to illustrate the harmony of family that he risks missing out on and even, in Sonnet 17, urges the fair youth to reproduce for his own sake; to prove his sonnets true to future readers:

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’
….
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme.

It's actually remarkable, the sheer number of different ways in which Shakespeare was able to say, essentially, the exact same thing in all of the first 17 sonnets. The fact that many of these sonnets are about the same thing does not hurt the readers enjoyment at all due to the broad range of vocabulary and multitude of variations in metaphor. In fact, Shakespeare owns this in sonnet 76, saying (and I apologise for breaking the structure with the excerpt):

… So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

Even within the inherent restrictions of the sonnet form and iambic pentameter, Shakespeare manages a great variation of rhythm and cadence, utilising beautifully clipped and elongated phrasing (apologies, I’m not down with the poetry lingo).
Despite all this, I can’t help but think: Just let the poor guy be! Let him enjoy his youth and worry about all the serious stuff later! Whither is thy own business, William? Thee would doth well to findeth ’t and mind ’t!


As the sonnet’s progress there are various interesting developments: a rival poet vying for the admiration of the fair youth, a bitter (temporary?) parting of ways and, of course, as we approach the later sonnets, the appearance of the poet’s mistress who fairs decidedly worse than the fair youth in Shakespeare’s praise with the following being about as flattering as it gets:

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

Oh, wait! This one is actually quite lovely:

… Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted,
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with you alone:

Of course, I have mischievously selected excerpts from these sonnets and, in fact, Shakespeare is just challenging the conventional ways in which beauty is defined but the man must have had cojones the size of watermelons to publish a sonnet saying his mistress had wretched breath. Watermelons or not, I wouldn’t be exposing those bad boys upon your next meeting, nor would I be sleeping over but with one eye open.


I don’t have much to say about ’A Lover’s Complaint’ as, honestly, it was largely impenetrable to me. I could deduce the general idea because, as archaic as it may be, the verse is still in English, but as far as any nuance or deeper meaning, it almost certainly flew over my head. This is one occasion where I was probably in need of further accompanying notes.


I will be coming back to these sonnets in future, taking the advice of two of Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell when they advised to ”Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.”
Though, if we are prepared to twist Shakespeare’s meaning a little to express a return to his thoughts and not our own, then I think he says it best in sonnet 77:

Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.

Adieu.

[Dolors · Rating 5 out of 5]

Less notorious than his plays, Shakespeare’s sonnets assimilate a secret map with hidden clues that lead to precious treasures. The intimate, even confessional tone of the 154 rhymes urges the eager reader to believe that the poetic voice is The Bard himself, who playfully volunteers the key to unlock the mysteries of his heart.
And yet… Do the sonnets tell a coherent story? If they do, is this story real or fictional? The fact that Thomas Thorpe, a poet, editor and admirer of Shakespeare, and not the author himself published this collection casts a shadow over the present order of the sonnets and their ostensible story line. Are they the product of literary artifice or the purest expression of the poet’s sentiments and his personal experiences?
Allow me to reply with another question.
Does it really matter?
The audacious imagery, the staggering metaphors, the musical alliteration, the ironic polysemies, the utter mastery of the language bursting into florid fireworks and the universality and relevancy of paramount themes such as the passage of time, the impending oblivion that comes with death and the convoluted nature of love constitute the invaluable legacy of the poet on their own. Everything else is mere speculation, but as per usual, Shakespeare teases with ambiguous piquancy as shown in Sonnet 144, which summarizes the main “plot” of the anthology in 4 stanzas:

“Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.”

A love triangle that consists of a “fair man”, a “dark woman” and the poet himself divides the sonnets in two noticeably different sections and presents a subversive approach to the foundations of courtly love employed by medieval troubadours because the “Muse” that stimulates inspiration seems to possess an adrogynous essence. Personal pronouns shift from verse to verse and the poet’s self-awareness plays an active role in the exulted display of emotions that becomes a faithful mirror for the complex gradation of the affairs of the heart. A prolongued meditation on the ethos of beauty and platonic love is interwoven with anguished cogitation about the inexorable passage of time that might wither the beloved’s blooming youth but never his élan-vital, which is immortalized in the poet’s writing:

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
Sonnet 18.

Whereas the “fair knight” awakens tenderness, blind adoration and the purest expressions of affection in stanzas that are replete with natural imagery and astute analogies of daily life scenes, the “dark lady”, addressed only in the last 28 sonnets, disturbs the poet with her unchaste promiscuity and adulterous love. The transcendental undertone of the former sonnets fades away leaving space only for satire, sexual lust and aggrieved reproaches. The harmonic features of the male lover contrast with the sensuously dark eyes of the woman, which lure the poet into debauchery and temptation against his wishes. Lies, deception ad cynical rebuffs are the highpoints of the puns and wordplays in the last sonnets. The language becomes merely explicative, if also prodigiously lucid and accusatory, and loses the hiperbolic flamboyance of the opening sonnets.

“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”
Sonnet 129.

Ironically enough, both lovers, fair man and dark woman, remain anonymous while the true identity of the poet has created havoc for centuries and his works continue to unleash passions among all kind of readers around the world. Shakespeare lives on in his words. In their suggestive rhythm, in their polifacetic meanings, in their musical texture.
Shakespeare’s poetry delves deep into the abysses of the human psyche, into the labyrinthine jumble of irrational, desperate love, into the stinky gutters of conscience, jealousy and betrayal, and still, he winks back with a lopsided smile and restores the magic of humanity in a single couplet:

“For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
That nothing me a something sweet to thee:
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me for my name is 'Will.' ”
Sonnet 136.

Miracles do not seem mambo-jumbo after reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, and art becomes magic, for divine providence is evinced stanza after stanza and my will submits to Will’s power...Subjugation was never sweeter!

[Piyangie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have known Shakespeare wrote sonnets. I had also bought a pocketbook of them from my visit to Shakespearean birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. But honestly, I really didn't give much thought on reading it until I was impelled by a group read. I'm really glad that I read it and thankful to the group and the member who nominated it.

Shakespeare is universally acclaimed for his plays. His use of satire, wit, clever plots, and darker and tragic elements have attracted the readers. And I feel that this attraction for his plays has considerably shadowed his sonnets and as such, they have been comparatively less known. Because of this reason, I was utterly surprised to find the sonnets beautiful, lyrical, intelligent, and absorbing.

Before I began reading the sonnets, I thought them to be individual ones. Here too I was in for another surprise. They are not individual sonnets but a connected and continued 154 sonnets which tells a story of love, devotion, jealousy, lust, separation, and pining among other things. Thus as in his plays, Shakespeare tells us a story through his sonnets too. And I must say he tells the story with a passion and an earnestness.

The narrator is a male poet and the bulk of the sonnets are devoted to the poet's love and devotion to a beautiful youth, his jealousies, and his pain at their separation. And the rest of the sonnets are devoted to his love, devotion, lust, and jealousy for his mistress. Interestingly, the sonnets address a poet's love for a male and a female. The narrator, being a male and a poet, I did wonder whether Shakespeare was modeling the narrator on himself. I was really surprised by the bold venture of Shakespeare given that these were written in the late 16th century. I wonder whether no one thought of them scandalous at the time.

Through his sonnets, I saw a different side of Shakespeare, a one I haven't seen through his plays. It was pleasing to know a passionate and emotional side existed in him in addition to his intelligence and creativity.

[Paul Weiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tough to give this anything other than 5 stars!

From the preface:

"Whereas the plays were written for public performance, the Sonnets were originally circulated privately among his friends. As the intense personal expression of his own deep experience they show the man behind the plays."

What's not to like about an uncomplicated collection of some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language? 154 Sonnets; heavy high quality paper; one poem per page presented in a large readable calligraphy style font in Shakespeare's original "ye olde" English complete with the archaic spelling; and, an alphabetic index of first lines to locate your favourites. Literary analysis and interpretation not included ... that's left up to the loving reader to absorb the poems one at a time, think about them and decide not only what they meant to Shakespeare but what they mean to you as a reader.

My personal favourite is #116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments". Perhaps it's because I first encountered it early in high school and memorized it in English class. Despite not truly appreciating the full depth and meaning of the poetry at that time, I still found it powerful enough that the lines have remained persistently in my head for over 45 years now. If that isn't powerful writing, "then I never writ nor no man ever loved."

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 3 out of 5]

De la Shakespeare, toată lumea știe, au rămas 154 de sonete. În treacăt fie spus, în limba engleză este aproape imposibil să scrii sonete, fiindcă engleza nu are suficiente rime, iar sonetul fără versuri rimate e ca mîncarea fără sare. Se știe la fel de bine că WS nu a publicat el însuși decît două poeme, unul în 1593 și celălalt în anul următor, amîndouă dedicate contelui Henry Wriothesley. În rest, nimic. Nici piese de teatru, nici poezii, nimic, nimic, nimic. Cele 154 de sonete s-au păstrat printr-o întîmplare care nu a depins, firește, de voința lui WS.

Așadar, în acest caz, un editor rapace (ca toți editorii dintotdeauna), pe nume Thomas Thorpe a jucat rolul întîmplării. A adunat sonetele care, pesemne, circulau deja printre amatorii de poezie (altfel nu se poate) și le-a publicat în 1609. În 20 mai, cartea a fost gata și a ieșit pe piață. Același Thorpe a adăugat și semnat cu inițialele TT o misterioasă dedicație pentru un și mai misterios Master WH. Pe coperta volumului scrie: Shake-speares Sonnets. Never before imprinted. Numele Shakespeare e scris cu cratimă, mulți editori din vremea lui au procedat la fel.

Avem, deci, 154 de sonete, atribuite de Thomas Thorpe lui WS. Se pune întrebarea: ce facem cu ele? Cel mai potrivit răspuns ar fi să le tratăm ca pe niște scrieri literare, ficțiuni, poezii de iubire, opere de imaginație, fantasme. Eu, unul, asta cred și recomand cititorilor de poezie: simpla lectură estetică a sonetelor. Citim versurile pentru a ne bucura. Finalitatea estetică mi se pare, așadar, exhaustivă.

Primele 126 de sonete au un destinatar masculin, evocat prin sintagme precum „my beloved fair youth”, „fair Lord” sau, mai limpede, „the master-mistress of my passion”. Ultimele sonete (de la 127 pînă la sfîrșit) se referă la / și invocă o doamnă brună, care nu va fi fost exagerat de frumoasă (dar asta contează, cînd iubești, foarte puțin). Cu siguranță, femeia cu părul sîrmos și cu pielea întunecată avea pe „vino-ncoa(ce)”.

Doamna brună (Dark Lady) a interesat mai puțin pe criticii literari și pe iluștrii biografi. De obicei, un bărbat scrie sonete unei femei ideale: nimic ieșit din comun. Destinatarul, în schimb, „chipeșul tînăr”, i-a făcut extrem de curioși. Munca istoricilor a fost în van. Identitatea amantului a rămas o enigmă.

Transcriu în încheiere sonetul CXXX:

Nu-s sori ochii iubitei, nu scînteie
roşia-i gură ca mărgeanu-n mări,
de-i albă neaua, sînul ei de ce e
posomorât, şi-i noapte al ei păr?
Ştiu, din Damasc, albe şi roşii roze
cu care chipul nu-i e logodit,
miresme ştiu, stîrnind apoteoze
străine de al Doamnei duh smerit,
îmi place s-o ascult, deşi-i mai scumpă
auzului, o muzică, -i ştiut,
nu le-am văzut, zeiţele cum umblă
dar ea, mergînd, păşeşte doar pe lut.
Şi totuşi, jur pe cer, făptura-i rară
cu nimeni şi nimic nu se compară.

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 5 out of 5]

For we which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

This Pow’rful Rhyme Eternal

Tennyson is famously to have declared Shakespeare 'greater in his sonnets than in his plays'. While the reader who might not soar as easily along the paths described by these Sonnets would find the comparison absurd to a degree, he/she would also have to admit that they understand the sentiment behind Tennyson’s blasphemy. Some of the sonnets are so well-crafted and consists of such unexpected imagery that they can leave one breathless at their majesty and imagination. Indeed, some of them are eloquent and eternal invocations of love at par with the best love poetry - just as his romances and tragedies that outrage conventions are the best in their genres!

Even when he departed from most conventional expectations of poetry, Shakespeare was still able to leave his imprint on the very sonnet form itself. That should tell us how important these sonnets really are to literature. The form is now called ‘Shakespearean Sonnets’, and to do that centuries past the invention of the sonnets as a form is also an achievement that defies imagination.


The Chatter of the Critics

Now we come to the depressing aspect: critical discussion on these, some of the best love poetry in the language, unfortunately centers more on historical speculation than on philosophical or aesthetic appreciation.

Most of the introductions and critical commentary that accompany the sonnets focus on a biographical excavatory project, mining the sonnets for information, leaving behind tired mounts in their wake. Scholarship have been tragically been too sidetracked on this issue - away from the heart of poetry to its scholarly peripheries where readers might not want to accompany them.

I wish some of these elaborate commentaries and footnotes that accompany almost every word of these sonnets were focussed instead on how the poems should be interpreted personally by the reader! Imagine if all poems were disassociated from the reader and read purely from a historical perspective of the author’s love-life or forensically on figuring out who it was addressed to - poetry would lose much of its universality!

The problem is that we know so little biographic detail of Shakespeare and the Sonnets provide a tantalizing prospect to scholars. The question ‘when, and to whom was this written?’ is one which the poems repeatedly invite their readers to pose, and which they quite deliberately fail to answer. Of course he may not even have wanted his sonnets to be printed; there was, after all, an interval of approximately fifteen years between composition and publication, which makes the sonnet’s poet an unreliable narrator at best - we have no clue what the sonnets were intended for. And speculations/recreations of the ‘Drama of the Sonnets’ have shown almost as much inventiveness as we might expect in Shakespeare himself!



Were they select poems sent to a single lover? Are they a collection of poems sent to many lovers, subject changing with each sonnet? Were they compositions made to amuse his friends or visitors, to impress them with his mastery? Were they lonely exercises of genius, indulged on to pass the time of the depressing Plague years? We really do not know. And knowing nothing, we still prefer to stumble about and tarnish the beauty of the poetry by wild surmises!

That is tragic.



As I said, the sonnets are tantalizing and they keep teasing the reader to make meaning out of them. At times they seem to build up a body of recurrent structures and preoccupations, and even a narrative of sorts, even shaping itself around possibly real events. And then it seems not to. A story converges from the lyrics, and then it vanishes. Instead, the reader should accept that the sonnets are so heavily patterned that almost any form could be seen in it - they are like the clouds, you only need to have enough enthusiasm and imagination to mould them to yourselves.

Through all this however, and throughout, the ‘voices’ of the Sonnets appear in all their intricacy and dramatic power, resisting any simple reading. Shakespeare begins his sonnets by introducing four of his most important themes - immortality, time, procreation, and selfishness and then plays them off against each other:

Sonnets of abject praise generate undertones of irony and criticism; Sonnets of abject depression generate undertones of hope and eternity; Sonnets of worldly criticism generate undertones of the exalted nature of poetry; Sonnets singing boasts about the power of poetry generate undertones of fear of mortality - the variations are endless and exhilarating.


Exit The Cave

There is an introductory essay called ‘The Cave and The Sun’ in the Dover-Wilson edition of the Sonnets, of which I read only the introduction since I wanted to stick to my Arden edition which had better and more detailed footnotes (with very useful headnotes accompanying each sonnet and sonnet sequence - highly recommended). I found the metaphor employed and the advice given by Wilson to the raiders to be very relevant to my own reading experience. I want to discuss it a bit here, even though Wilson went on to disappoint me by not sticking to his own prescriptions on how the sonnets should be read and critiqued.

Sir Walter Raleigh, who wrote the most human short life of William Shakespeare that we possess, began his section on the Sonnets as follows:

'There are many footprints around the cave of this mystery, none of them pointing in the outward direction. No one has ever attempted a solution of the problem without leaving a book behind him; and the shrine of Shakespeare is thickly hung with these votive offerings, all withered and dusty.'

Wilson adopts this metaphor and elaborates: Raleigh’s cave of mystery calls another to mind, Plato's cave of illusion, in which the human race sit chained with their backs to the sun without, and are condemned to accept the passing shadows on the wall before them for the truth—the real truth being only revealed to the few who are able to break their bonds and turn to face the light of day. Absorbed in our own attempts to solve the biographical puzzles that the individual sonnets offer us, we remain blind to the sun that casts these shadows but gives meaning to the whole.

Begin by seeing that meaning and recognizing the whole as the greatest love-poem in the language, and the mystery of the detail becomes so unimportant as to fade away.

That this is the right approach to an understanding, apparently so obvious and so natural, is surely beyond contest? At least to me it is.


The Philosophy Vs The Biography

Coming back to the sonnets themselves, one of the continuous experiences that enthrall the reader is to see how the sonnets keeps defying expectations and conventions. For example, neither the exhortation to love and ‘settle down’, the love for the young man, nor the passion for the 'dark woman' are subjects an ambitious poet would be likely to choose as the most suitable to display the genius of his verse.

They instead form testimony to Shakespeare’s overriding powers of imagination.

Peter Ackroyd, in his biography of Shakespeare, speculates that Shakespeare experimented and stretched the sonnet form to its breaking point - perhaps because he was bored of poetry, which came too easy to him.

When we consider the repetition of themes and the easy show-offiness of how Shakespeare uses the Sonnets to tell the same things again and again, but always with consummate expertise and ease, it is hard to dismiss the idea.



This might be reflected in the fact that so many of the Sonnets are overly megalomaniacal about the power of his verse, boasting of the defeat of time and the acquisition/granting of immortality.

But even as these exalt us, even while we may be in awe at the overwhelming force of Shakespeare’s imagination, we would also be melancholy at the theme of relentless failure expressed in the poems, over and over, dealing with self-deception and betrayal; with the inadequacy of the mind, or the imagination, or poetry, to have any effect, even on the poet’s own feelings.

This is how Shakespeare continually inverts the themes and explores them from multiple angles. When he praises the ennobling qualities of love in one Sonnet, he might make it about love's insecurities and dark aspects later, either in the same sonnet by employing the structural ‘turn’ or in a linked sonnet later on in the sequence.

All this might make the reader feel out of sorts and uneasy. It is as if the conversation jumped from topic to topic in a broken-backed fashion. At times affectionate and intimate, at times abject and distant; but nothing clicks tight, no overall theme emerges. The poet of the Sonnets veers back and forth from the dream of omnipotence to the dread of mortality and impending loss, continuously in flux.

Even the conclusion of this is almost wistful, a testimony to the ultimate powerlessness of the art that has been so hyperbolically praised, but at the same time leaving it hanging in mid-air, since we do not really know if these 'concluding' sonnets are really the conclusion, or if they were ordered right, or if Shakespeare intended to contrast the theme of the 'concluding' couple of sonnets by another soaring portrayal of Cupid reasserting himself. Again, we can only speculate.

Reading the Sonnets is a particularly rewarding (and time consuming) exercise due to these delightful perversities of history and of the poet’s pen.

Thus the reader would conclude the reading of the Sonnets with a strong sense that the emotions expressed in them refuses to fit into pigeon-holes that we/critics may have constructed for them.



Individually most of the sonnets are creatures of infinite beauty but also bewildering due to their contrasting colors, and when we read the whole sequence as one, we might experience them differently. As one of the critics say, from its total plot, however ambiguous, however particular, there emerges something not indeed common or general like the love expressed in many individual sonnets, but yet, in a higher way, universal. While this is indeed true, we again lack the tools or the certainty to convert the individual sonnets into a ‘plot’ - we might try to understand a ‘philosophy’ of love and life from these meditations, but to hunt for a plot among them can only take away from the pleasure and the true experience of it.


To me at least, the conclusion was that to relentlessly attribute autobiographical aims to the sonnets is to not give due credit to the imaginative genius of Shakespeare and impute that he was incapable of inventing such realistic emotions with his poetic person than he was able to achieve with his dramatic one. Why credit only the dramatic author to be capable of this imaginative creativity and not the poet? I think it is only desperation that forces this on us.

We should accept that the author-character that emerges from the sonnets is not created for our convenience. It is not necessarily William Shakespeare, the man; it is William Shakespeare, the poet.

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

Since everyone hath every one, one shade,

And you, but one, can every shadow lend.

[هدى يحيى · Rating 4 out of 5]

بلا جدال السونيتة المفضلة
----------------

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remembered not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.... ...

أعتذر إن لم أترجمها أو أترجم معناها
فشكسبير لا يترجم
وكل محاولة لترجمته هي تجرأ لا يغتفر
!

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

O William Shakespeare I hate you so much
For writing far better than ever I could
Though you have long lost the power to touch
A lover's soft hand in the springtime wood

Your eyes they've not seen for four hundred years
The brightness of mirrors in faces that fade
Nor have the sighings of winds reached your ears
Since your body in a deep hole was laid

But how can a dead man's words breathe more life
Than the ones that come from a living brain?
How can a bridegroom whom Death made his wife
Marry the living again and again?

An answer to these questions I have not
I'm but the Bard’s bastard son he forgot

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over my years of teaching, I have memorized a couple dozen of these sonnets, on my morning walks. Some I learned in a two-mile walk, like the one on his own writing, "Why is my verse so barren of new pride?"(76). Others I have had to re-memorize every time I teach, like "Some glory in their birth, some in their skill," (91). Their imbedded mnemonics vary greatly. When I have required Shakespeare classes to memorize a couple, students would often pick very difficult ones, not knowing they varied so.
They only improve with familiarity as do many well-known poems. Ease of memorization is one criterion of poetic greatness, though it's also a function of personal experience and obsessions. Overall these sonnets may NOT be as easy to memorize as are Dickinson's poems, or many of WB Yeats's, say "Under Ben Bulben." Or Herbert's "Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright."

My Ph.D. was on 17th C English poetry that citicized other poems, especially Andrew Marvell and Donne, but even Dryden who made criticism prose. (My This Critical Age, U Minn., 1976) Sonnets are often critical of sonnet conventions, like #116,

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark
Which looks on tempests and is ne'er shaken;
It is a star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips
And cheeks within his bending cycle's compass come.
Love alters not through his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out unto the edge of doom.
IF this be error, and upon me proved,
I Never writ, no no man ever loved."

Here the author sums up what sonnets claim of Love, that
the conventions he knows from writing, AND from loving.
But as Will (his punning sonnet name for himself in the later ones) says of his own writing, "That every word doth almost tell my name" (76).
This can also be said of Dickinson's and some of Yeats's. Shakespeare adds that this verse name-telling also suggests the genealogy of the verse,"Showing their birth...." In that way, these sonnets become ads--for themselves. Political admen, eat your hearts out.

[Manny]

Here's a minor literary mystery that has been bothering me this morning. On p 176 of La vieillesse, Simone de Beauvoir quotes a French translation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, which in the original goes as follows:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

. Her translation is presented thus:

«Tu reconnais en moi ce moment de l'année
Où pendent aux rameaux qui tremblent dans le froid,
Chœurs nus et délabrés, quelques feuilles fanées,
Où des oiseaux naguère on entendait la voix.
En moi tu vois aussi le feu crépusculaire
Qui decline à l'ouest au coucher du soleil
Et que doit emporter bientôt la nuit austère»

«Car le temps sans répit mène à l'affreux hiver,
L'été, pour l'y détruire, et la sève se glace,
Plus de feuillages drus, la neige a recouvert
La beauté ; en tous lieux la sterilité passe»

«Donc ne laisse l'hiver, de sa main decharnée
Ravager ton été sans l'avoir distilée...»

I thought the first seven lines were excellent, the rest somewhat less so, and wondered who the translator was; she doesn't say. After a little googling, I find that the initial portion is from a 1970 translation by Jean Fuzier. But who wrote the rest of it, and why has she performed this strange piece of mix-and-match without even telling us what she's done? I suppose that now I know part of the story, the quotation marks do give a clue. Should we conclude that there are in fact three translators?
________________________

I must have been very sleepy this morning. On looking at them again, the second and third passages can't possibly be from Sonnet 73, no matter how loose the translation. And indeed, after a little more searching, I find that the second passage is these lines from Sonnet 5:

For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:

while the third comes from Sonnet 6:

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:

I still haven't figured out who translated them though.

[Huda Aweys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shakespeare's poems addressed the bilateral of life and death
Also addressed the birth through his poems too, he use an eloquent and beautiful images , It was a good book :)
شكسبير كان بيناقش هنا الموت و الحياة .. الموت و الولادة بكلاسيكية و بحس شاعرى رائع .. شفت صور كتير اوى رائعة وتشبيهات بليغه وجميلة و حبيت فعلا :)
دا رابط للقراءة بس ما تعتمدوش على ترجمته و اعتمدوا على حسكم اكتر :)
http://www.mnaabr.com/vb/showthread.p...

[Naman Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a collection? Flawless, superb, and amazing! You cannot ignore this book by any means. Interpretations can go wild at times and remain conserved most of the other times...

[boxer_dogs_dance · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is nothing to say that hasn't been said.

I have especially loved sonnet 29

[Apoorva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection of poetry on various themes such as different types of love, lust, beauty, betrayal, destruction caused by time, art etc.

Some of the ideas expressed seemed archaic and regressive but it’s understandable as it was written long ago, so it doesn’t affect my reading experience.

I liked the collection of romantic sonnets; some sonnets have a sad quality to them. Here’s one of them:

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travail tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired.
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

[BJ Lillis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not saying Shakespeare was gay. I’m just saying the man wrote 154 sonnets and 126 of them are about how much he loves the world’s most beautiful man. The other 28 are about how his mistress is ugly and smells. Somehow, I hadn’t quite registered that “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is about a boy! As opposed to the lines every woman longs to hear: “In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes, / For they in thee a thousand errors note, / But tis my heart that loves what they despise.” Or this straight burn: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun, / Coral is far more red, then her lips red, / If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun, / If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.” Be still my heart. Meanwhile: “O thou my lovely boy, who in thy pow’r / Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour.”

And yea, I get it, the whole point is that spiritual love is higher than sexual love. Be that as it may, love for a man, in these poems, is also higher than love for a woman.

I suppose it’s no surprise that Shakespeare was good. But God. Damn. The man was good. And sure, the whole “my poetry makes you immortal” thing is a little tired in 2025, but that’s only a small part of what these poems are up to, and anyway I’m pretty sure it was still fresh in 1598.

Sonnet 126, with its blank last couplet, stopped me in my tracks. Just empty space in parentheses expressing the ultimate futility of human language. It may be my favorite, though there are at least a dozen contenders:

O thou my lovely boy, who in thy pow’r
Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour,
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st,
Thy lover’s with’ring, as thy sweet self grow’st,
If nature (sov’reign mistress over wrack)
As thou go’st onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace, and wretched minute kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure,
She may detain but not still keep her treasure!
Her audit (though delay’d) answer’d must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
 (            )
 (            )

Because I could, I read the first edition of 1609 on my tablet (thank you Folger Library!). It took a little while to get used to the long s’s and u’s for v’s—as in: “If Nature (ſoueraine miſteres ouer wrack),”—but I thought the original spelling really did add something intangible and special to the experience.

In keeping with Elizabethan genre expectations, the sonnets are followed by a short narrative “answer” poem, A Lover’s Complaint. Frankly, I take issue with any modern edition that excludes it. It’s a gorgeous poem, and it struck me as absolutely integral to the whole. Don’t be deceived by its (relative) forthrightness. The poem’s theme is the power of language to injure and deceive, and it is that, more than the shift to a woman’s perspective, that recasts and deepens the infinite meanings of the sonnets that precede it.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review from 2013 & 2017 (Pelican Shakespeare)

I really haven't read Shakespeare's sonnets in any consistent way since high school (where I read less than twenty and memorized two). It was fascinating to read all 154 from first to last as a whole connected work. One really gets a sense that English is a tool which almost all of us use, many often play with, but only Shakespeare fully owned. The Bard could bend a word, fit infinity in a couplet, and drop the whole universe on a period.

Review from 2023 (Cambridge edition)

This Stanley Wells, Cambridge edition is different than most collected Sonnets of Shakespeare because it 1) includes all the sonnets (including the ones from the plays, whether foreshortened or extended), 2) places them in chronological order (as best as they could figure), and 3) then does a short analysis of each one. It felt a bit like reading The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary with Commentary with its commentary and academic heft that still lands well with interested amateurs.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the past several months, I listened to the actor Patrick Stewart read these sonnets, only one each day. That counts as reading, right? He skipped a few for different reasons and I then went to the text to read those, as well as several I wanted to “hear” more fully after listening to his rendering. Regardless, these sonnets deserve to be reread.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sonnets of William Shakespeare make for a reading experience that is at once similar to and different from the experience of reading the plays. On the one hand, there is the same endlessly inventive, wonderfully evocative use of figurative language; one revels in the vivid figures of speech, the insights into human character, the catholicity of Shakespeare’s poetic imagination, whether one is reading a sonnet or a play. And yet, on the other hand, in a sonnet all those Shakespearean gifts are not tethered to a story, or to stage directions, or to the demands of the Elizabethan theatre generally. Some readers find the sonnets to be a purer expression of Shakespeare’s poetic ethic; others miss the dramatic context within which the plays situate the poetry. For me, the sonnets are neither better nor worse than the plays: they are interestingly different, and that interesting difference is enough for me.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets were published in quarto form in 1609 – or, to put it another way, probably between two of Shakespeare’s late romance plays: Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608) and Cymbeline, King of Britain (1610). As editors Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar point out in the Folger Library edition of the Sonnets that I have before me, there is much speculation regarding the circumstances under which the Sonnets were written and the person(s) for whom they may have been written.

On the back cover of this edition is a miniature of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, whom Wright and LaMar describe as “a leading candidate for the friend and patron of Shakespeare to whom many of the sonnets were addressed” – though the editors hasten to add that “no concrete proof exists for this identification.” There is good reason for the editors to be thus cautious – for as Wright and LaMar point out in a helpful foreword, there is a great deal of unhelpful and probably unprovable speculation regarding the person(s) who may have inspired the sonnets.

All that speculation is understandable, as some of the poems offer what seem like tantalizing hints of some sort of personal tie between the historical William Shakespeare and these 154 poems that were published in 1609, as when Sonnet 57 ends with this rhyming couplet: “So true a fool is love that in your Will,/Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.” The capitalization of “Will” inevitably brings the identity and personality of the real-life Shakespeare to mind.

For my part, I find such speculation pointless. We all know that Elizabethan patrons often asked writers to compose on a particular theme, or in a particular way, or for a particular person. If the Earl of Pembroke, or some other patron, had contracted with William Shakespeare for the composition and publishing of these poems, then it does not necessarily follow that the poems reflect some deep feeling or life experience on Shakespeare’s part. After all, Shakespeare never killed his wife or stepfather, or divided a kingdom into three parts, or (as far as we know) communed with witches regarding how to seize power – yet he wrote Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth.

Perhaps a better way to think about the sonnets, rather, is to draw an analogy with what one gets in an album of popular music: the early, pre-Rubber Soul Beatles, for example, or the Temptations – or, in more modern times, Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. Most (though not necessarily all) of the songs will be about love – the joy of new love, the pain of love lost, the melancholy and angst of remembering a love from long ago. So it is, I would argue, with Shakespeare’s sonnets. They provide a look at all sorts of sides of love.

Structurally, the sonnets are what are known as Petrarchan sonnets – 14-line poems, written in iambic pentameter (five beats to a line, with the beat falling on the second syllable. The rhyme scheme is ab ab cd cd ef ef gg. An initlal four-line stanza introduces an idea; the next two stanzas unfold different dimensions of that idea; the rhyming couplet that concludes the poem offers a final twist that gives the reader something to think about. The challenge for the poet is, within the rigidity of this format, to keep coming up with something new to say, and to do so with language that will remain poetic and memorable. Shakespeare, unsurprisingly, is more than equal to that challenge.

Some of the most famous of the sonnets demonstrate Shakespeare’s artistic purpose of illuminating all sorts of sides of love. Sonnet 18 overflows with the joy of new and blooming love – “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate” – and does so in such a memorable manner that the makers of the film Shakespeare in Love (1998) show a young William Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes) so very much in love that he takes a break from writing Romeo and Juliet so he can pen just this sonnet for his beloved, Lady Viola de Lesseps (played by Gwyneth Paltrow).

It is an anachronism, of course – a good sixteen years separated the first performance of Romeo and Juliet and the publication of the Sonnets – but the point is made. Sonnet 18, all by itself, is one of the greatest and most memorable love poems ever written; and, like many of the sonnets, it emphasizes the power of the poet’s art to make the poet’s beloved immortal, long after the passage of time takes away both physical beauty and life itself (“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”).

That same theme is emphasized in works like Sonnet 55, which begins by stating that “Not marble nor the gilded monuments/Of princes shall outlive this pow’rful rhyme”. A statue, the speaker says, is no sure way to immortalize the beauty of one’s beloved: “When wasteful war shall statues overturn,/And broils root out the work of masonry,/Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn/The living record of your memory.” A statue can be destroyed in a war like those that brought about the catastrophic fall of Rome or Constantinople; a poem, which can be preserved in memory, and can be written down and published over and over again, is more lasting.

Sonnet 73 takes on a decidedly more melancholy frame of mind, as Shakespeare writes that “That time of year thou may’st in me behold/When ruined leaves, or few, or none, do hang/Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/Bare ruined choirs where once the sweet birds sang.” The speaker is an older person, at some point in the autumn of his life; and metaphors of sunset, or of a fire expiring in its own ashes, reinforce the speaker’s awareness of his own mortality. The speaker concludes by telling his beloved, “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,/To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

Shakespeare was 45 years old in 1609, and was living in a time when the average life expectancy was 42 years. He retired to his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon four years after publishing the Sonnets, and was dead within three years after retiring, at the age of 52. No doubt such considerations of mortality were much on his mind when he composed this sonnet.

Sometimes, the speaker of a sonnet feels bound, against his own better instincts, by the sheer power of his physical passion for the beloved. The speaker of Sonnet 151 laments that “I do betray/My nobler part to my gross body’s treason”, and many who read this poem will no doubt remember a time when they felt passionately drawn to someone they knew was not really the right person for them, and might even be bad for them. At other times, the love expressed in a sonnet will be a true union of compatible hearts and spirits and souls, as in Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments”).

I liked watching Shakespeare make fun of those contemporaries who resorted to cliched similes about their beloved having eyes like the sun and lips as red as coral: Sonnet 130 begins, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;/Coral is far more red than her lips’ red”. After proceeding through a veritable catalogue of poetic cliches of the time, the speaker of this sonnet concludes, “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare.”

It is interesting to contemplate the depth of the sonnets’ influence on the culture of the Western world generally. When I read Sonnet 30’s opening invocation of times when “to the invocation of sweet silent thought/I summon up remembrance of things past”, I thought, perhaps inevitably, of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27). The title would translate literally as In Search of Lost Time, and yet the first English translation bore the title Remembrance of Things Past. Shakespeare would have found that a fun bit of irony, I think.

As mentioned earlier in this review, I am not really concerned with who the sonnets might “really” have been for or about; what matters to me, rather, is their beauty and their resonance as arguably the greatest love poems ever written. Who are the sonnets for? Who are they about? I will tell you. They are for you. They are about you. They are for and about all of us, now and forever.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

SHAKESPEARE WANTS YOU TO BREED!!!!

The first 17 or so sonnets in the series left me taken aback. It's right there in the first line of Sonnet #1:

1. From fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty's Rose might never die
But as the riper should be time decease
His tender heir might bear his memory

There's this obsession with propagating the species. This concern about breeding dominates the first 17 sonnets in the series, something I had not been aware of before.


2. ...
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use
If thou couldst answer, 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse'


3. Look in the glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time this face should form another

4. ....
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

6. ....
That's for thyself to breed another thee

7. .....
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a son.

8. ...
mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
...
Sings this to thee, "Thou single will prove none".

9. ...
Ah if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
the world will wail thee, like a makeless wife
..
No love towards others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

10. ...
Make thee another self, for love of me,
that beauty still may live in thine or thee.

11. ...
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.
...
She carv'd thee for her seal, and mean thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.


Actually, as a gay man, I find that "harsh, featureless, and rude" pretty offensive. It continues:


12. ...
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

13. ...
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give.

14. ...
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

17. ...
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it and in my rime.

Fortunately, #18 is the glorious "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", and from here on out it appears to be smooth sailing.

But that battery of breeder-boosting that opens this collection was a little off-putting, to say the least. It seems so dismissive of those of us who were put on earth to carry out some other purpose, somehow.

But this is neither here nor there. This book contains some of the most awesome language in the entire body of English literature. To assign it a rating seems entirely presumptuous; nothing but 5 stars seems even conceivable.

My favorite, if forced to choose, is a conventional one:

#29. When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
...
Haply I think on thee --- and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

Quite apart from the theme of the poem, how he changes mood with just that single line "like to the lark at break of day arising" astonishes me every time I read it.

[Rahma.Mrk · Rating 4 out of 5]

هو إكتشاف لشكسبير الشاعر.
الترجمة ممتازة لدرجة أنني في بعض أحيان اعجبت بالنص عربي لجودته أكثر من نص إنجليزي.
مثل السونية رقم 48.
لمحبي الشعر و حتى للباحثين على إكتشاف نمط جديد من الكتابات.
سونيات شكشبير هي الأفضل.
أحببت الكتاب و مازلت أعود لسونيات معينة كي أقرءها.

9 février 18

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I have always had a fondness of spending time in Shakespeare's birthplace, and probably even more so during the last couple of years, I thought it was high time I delve into his Sonnets. To enjoy these Sonnets, I found I sometimes needed to reread them over in my mind, or even out loud to understand what it was Shakespeare meant. I can tell he spoke from the heart, that much is obvious, but what did he really mean?

These Sonnets are important in their own right, and when analysed, it is known that the recipient of these Sonnets, or at least some of them, is a male friend. Over time, this relationship declines, and the focus of the Sonnets rests on a Dark Lady.

I have particular favourites which I have marked for future reference, as I think this is definitely a collection I will return back to, especially when I fancy dipping into Shakespeare. There are 154 Sonnets here, and there is much beauty and despair, both erotic and platonic love, but most importantly, the emotions that make us human.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to say about this pretty collection of Shakespeare's sonnets?

Well, I gifted this gorgeous edition to myself for my birthday. I do have a very pretty book of Shakespeare's plays it goes along with nicely. Why the sonnets though, and why now? Truth be told, it's all Sir Patrick Stewart's fault. When the lockdowns started everywhere, he (actually, his wife) had the brilliant idea of recording him reading a sonnet every day. So I followed alone and enjoyed his voice and some little anecdotes here and there and thus finally read the sonnets as well (I had known some of the most famous ones but not all).

Not much needs to be said about the most famous bard in the history of literature. The things we have to thank Shakespeare for (whoever he truly was) are almost inumerous. And obviously he did not only write plays (comedies just as much as tragedies and others) but also quite an impressive number of sonnets as well!
I've highlighted my favourites as status updates while reading this book. Yes, I got a little neglectful towards the end, you'll just have to read them all for sourselves to find your own favourite(s).

Brilliant works of art (though I have no problem admitting that there were one or two sonnets I had my problems with - interestingly, so did Sir Patrick, which made me feel better *lol*) in a very pretty slipcased hardcover that have brightened a few moments of my days this year. The classics usually are that for a reason and I was delighted to find that these underrated short(er) works are just as touching and beautiful as the full-length plays.

[Yogita Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing collection of poems... you cannot argue against it. However, the collection (if taken in group) is different when you compare it to the poems individually in the series. It makes difficult concerns for the readers who are novice.

[♡ Martina ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐
Sonetti stupendi ma la traduzione lascia un po' a desiderare 😒