Customer Reviews

The Sonnets and Narrative Poems: The Complete Non-Dramatic Poetry (Signet Classics)

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This is the perfect way to read Shakespeare. I also highly recommend the other volumes of Shakespeare available from the Everyman's Library.

Shakespeare's sonnets and narrative poems are something that every well-versed romantic should have a copy of and this well priced and durable volume is great for reading and re-reading and marking up your favorite passages to memorize later.

This is my newest addition to my Everyman's Library of classics. It is a very nice edition with a ribbon marker attached. I now have several dozen volumes of Everyman's and will continue to add more to my library this year. I am also a "Prime" member and love saving all that money of shipping!

Having read "A MidSummer's Night Dream" I knew that the bard could pen page after page of love-filled, alluring rhyming verse. But if that's what you fancy then you must read the sonnets and the long lyric poems contained in this Everyman's edition.

I'm trying to commit sonnet #18 to memory. It famously starts "shall I compare these to a summer's day". These are among the greatest pick up lines of the 16th century.

The sonnets are beautiful in their appreciation of love and the feminie form. Shakespeare must have been exactly as he was potrayed in the film "Shakespeare in Love": always on the prowl for females and continually in search of a muse. (Interestingly the translation of "muse" in the 15th and 16th century is "poet.)

Finally, the poem Venus and Adonis is more of this romantic banter. This poem is red hot, much more erotic than anything you could read in Maxim or Cosmopolitan. Consider this: "Being so enraged (aroused), desire doth lender her force Courageously to pluck him from his horse...She red and hot as coals of glowing fire, He red for shame, but frosty in desire...Tis but a kiss I beg--what art thou coy."

This is titalliting, stimulating fair. ("Fair" means pretty in old English.) Who can read this without blushing. No wonder we didn't read this in high school.