William Shakespeare - Sonnets

by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare wrote 154 Sonnets mostly in the 1590s. Fairly short poems, they deal with issues such as lost love. His sonnets have an enduring appeal due to his characteristic skill with language and words.
It contains 154 sonnets from W. Shakespeare, It's over 60 pages!

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Shakespeare, Literature

160 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 23, 2013

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

[Monobella · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me over a year to finish. Have never felt more accomplished for finish a book before. Sonnet 69 is my favorite.

[Amanda (bookedwithamanda) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too unintelligent to appreciate Shakespeare to the fullest or if I just genuinely don't care. There were some good sonnets but most were just okay. Not a terrible read but I don't know if I'd do it again.

[Brija · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't agree with everything said here, but it might reflect how women were actually treated in that era. The romantic poems seem to show the sad realities women faced, and I found the sadder sonnets more interesting than the romantic ones.

One among many of the beautiful sonnet:

-LXXI
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if,--I say you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;     
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can now say I've read all of Shakespeare's sonnets

[Alfia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will was a fa-reeeeek! Sometimes I wanted to slap him upside the head with all his creepy "You better get breeding, lady!" talk, followed by a truly disturbing amount of boytoy worship, bookended by a tormented affair with a mysterious dark woman who clearly gave him the run-around. But all is forgiven of course because Will managed to take all his hormonal striving and turn it into glorious metaphors of our brief time to enjoy the exquisite beauty - and annoying banality - of life. I have yet to see a realistic portrayal of how clearly - er - romantically complex he was. "Shakespeare in Love" was clearly pure fiction. I first read these when I was a teenager (in an expurgated version I suspect), and recently listened (twice!) to this wonderful audio rendition of them performed by Nick Sandys. Quite a different tale. Poor Will. Poor, naughty, Will. One can only hope that Anne Hathaway never read these.

[Sonny Fertile · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can one really say when it's Shakespeare right? I did read some back in highschool against my will and thought maybe I'd give it another shot now that I'm old and gray but still,  exceedingly  more rebellious than even then. I liked it. I did. I think it might require a bit of study to understand each line as intended. But interpretation is a wonderful and select commodity. These sonnets might be kind of like reading a play list of love songs would be if you could read songs. Not to be confused with reading music. But reading songs.  Music to my eyes. Ya that's it. Even my puppy has sat there with me,  looking at me perplexingly while cocking his head left and then  right as he followed me rhyming my way through sections of the collection in a horribly  lacking Anthony Hopkins impersonation. Lector does Shakespeare. Now that I could listen to that all day.

[Rachna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read some of the Bard’s sonnets in college and was intrigued by the word play. Of course, no one quite describes love like he does: Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. However, reading them in sequence, I was surprised how insistent he was about having children! Even if it is to continue the beauty blood line. Some of the words and phrases need translation where LitCharts helped. Otherwise, it is a charming collection. I go back to some of my favourites again and again.

[Hugolane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry is not my strong point. I can enjoy it and even be delighted by it, but I can't say that was a frequent occurrence reading Shakespeare's sonnets. I put that down in part to the renaissance formula and tropes that 400 years on now often seem trite, but there are moments that caught me completely.

[Samantha Gizzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first time sitting down and deciding on my own to read “Shakespeare”. After learning about Emilia Bassano and all that is tangled up with that, I wanted to try and see it in a different light! I was pleasantly surprised that I could decipher about half of the sonnets and even connected to some too!

[Ruth]

I reread the sonnets every few years from the same volume, which has all my notes going back to when I was in my 20s and thought I had amazing insights. It's very cringe 😆 But I love soaking in the rhythm and the language.

[Karen Berlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Timeless in theme and insight, these 154 linguistically rich sonnets express complex feelings and questions associated with love, fidelity (or lack thereof), ambition, power, fate, free will, death and other life phenmenon.

[Molly Cooper Willis]

“All men are bad and in their badness reign.”

“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
[…]
Love’s not time’s fool.”

“And yet love knows it is a greater grief / To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.”

[yam · Rating 4 out of 5]

shakespeare was shakespearing

[Aidan Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

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-'