13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Premium edition of the Sonnets, January 9, 2007
This is a nice edition, worthy of gift-giving. There is only one Sonnet per page, so you can choose one and bookmark it for a friend. The paper is quality and the binding and overall look is very good.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great find - It's both volumes, January 4, 2002
This edition of the sonnets is one of the most important and the description on Amazon is misleading - It is actually both volumes 24 and 25 bound together so you get the complete set It's hard to find this book so it is a great find in this version
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34 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic poetry, February 23, 2003
This review is from: The Sonnets (The Pelican Shakespeare) (Mass Market Paperback)
William Shakespeare is best known as a playwright. When you think of Shakespeare, you automatically think of plays -- "Romeo and Juliet," "Macbeth," "Hamlet," etc.
But he was also a poet of considerable skill. And while he sprinkled his various plays with poetry and songs, his poems are best appreciated when they're read all by themselves -- particularly the cluster of brilliant "Sonnets" that he penned. These works just have a unique, hauntingly vivid flavour of their own.
Each sonnet has no title, and is simply identified by numbers. And while Shakespeare's love poems are the best known of these works, he addresses different themes in theme -- old age, writer's block loneliness, the cruelty of the world, sex, beauty, a mysterious rival poet, and Shakespeare's own complicated romantic feelings (love that "looks upon tempests and is not shaken").
And these poems are absolutely lovely. Some of these sonnets are pretty well-known ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate") but most of them are a little more obscure. They have vivid metaphors and imagery ("let not winter's ragged hand deface," "gold candles fix'd in heaven's air") and hauntingly lovely passages ("What is your substance, whereof are you made,/That millions of strange shadows on you tend?").
And these sonnets really give you new insights into Shakespeare as a person -- he feels uncertainty, passionate love, unhappiness, lust and quirky humor. But while it's obvious these sonnets were deeply personal, they can still be appreciated on their own, particularly as love poetry.
William Shakespeare's "Sonnets" are rich with meaning, language and atmosphere -- the Elizabethan English takes a little deciphering, but it's well worth it.
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