Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
Ok. I am going to call it a day on this one. I read half and realised that while I appreciate the beauty of Shakespeare and do not doubt his genius, not all the sonnets are for me. I needed to keep using an analysis to decipher a lot of the sonnets which made it plan hard work. In the end, after reading half of them, I then read his most famous sonnets and agree that his most famous sonnet Number 18 is my favourite.
I will never understand people who don't like Shakespeare's work.
3.5/5 stars. Five stars to Shakespeare’s beautiful prose but I have a problem with his view on women. I know this was written in a very different time period, but it still irks me so much of his view of his black-amore lady. At first, he writes from the classic viewpoint that women are there to marry, have children and pass their lingering beauty onto their children. That it is wrong for a woman to waste her beauty, her youth on spinster hood. He also goes on to talk about that although his lady can write it will never compare to what a man can do himself. Later his poems turn sad about his son’s death, and then further on how he is growing old and how his love spites him for other male suitors. I love Shakespeare most times especially with his delicious and tragically written plays but I still can’t stand his image on the ideal woman and that of many men from this period. My inner feminist just says no.
I'm not really a poetry person, but damn, many of these are so good! I thought it would be a drag to read through all of these, but it wasn't really. Just a few times it got a little heavy and hard to understand.
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.
If it weren't for the fact that my english isn't as good to keep track of its arcaic expressions, I would've suprisingly enjoyed it a lot, the sonnet no. 116 was one of my favorites:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
I love Shakespeare's sonnets and this is a beautiful edition.
Sir Patrick Stewart, lovely man, read Shakespeare’s sonnets on Instagram, one a day, starting in March 2020. It took a while. It was lovely to listen to his gorgeous voice and very relaxing. He must be the most adored man in social media.
I did not listen to him daily, but rather had a peek now and then. I liked that Jonathan Frakes checked in one day and read a sonnet, too. And Ian McKellen visited for SirPatStew‘s 80st birthday.
I definitely need to revisit this at some point, as I haven‘t read or listened to enough of these sonnets. WIP.
I did not listen to him daily, but rather had a peek now and then. I liked that Jonathan Frakes checked in one day and read a sonnet, too. And Ian McKellen visited for SirPatStew‘s 80st birthday.
I definitely need to revisit this at some point, as I haven‘t read or listened to enough of these sonnets. WIP.
Reading this is like getting continually punched in the stomach. That is of course a good thing when it comes to literature, though not always that pleasant.
I know I’m being cliche when I say that it is xviii that touches me the most, but this is the only writing consisting of less that 20 lines that has made me cry.
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
I mean.
I know I’m being cliche when I say that it is xviii that touches me the most, but this is the only writing consisting of less that 20 lines that has made me cry.
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
I mean.