Books with title Sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman. The sonnets were first published in a 1609 quarto with the full stylised title: SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. Never before Imprinted. (although sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim). The quarto ends with "A Lover's Complaint", a narrative poem of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal. There has been critical debate regarding its authorship. The sonnets to the young man express overwhelming, obsessional love. The main issue of debate has always been whether it remained platonic or became physical. The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are addressed to the young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it to the next generation. Other sonnets express the speaker's love for the young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress; and pun on the poet's name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to the "little love-god" Cupid. The sonnets are almost all constructed from three quatrains, which are four-line stanzas, and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter.[21] This is also the meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets. Often, either the beginning of the third quatrain or of the last couplet mark the volta ("turn"), or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany.[22] There are a few exceptions: Sonnets 99, 126, and 145. Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126 consists of six couplets, and two blank lines marked with italic brackets; 145 is in iambic tetrameters, not pentameters. In one other variation on the standard structure, found for example in sonnet 29, the rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the second (b) rhyme of quatrain one as the second (f) rhyme of quatrain three. One interpretation is that Shakespeare's sonnets are a pastiche or parody of the 300-year-old tradition of Petrarchan love sonnets; Shakespeare consciously inverts conventional gender roles as delineated in Petrarchan sonnets to create a more complex depiction of human love.[31] He plays with gender roles (20), comments on political events (124), makes fun of love (128), speaks openly about sexual desire (129), parodies beauty (130) and even references pornography (151). In a dozen of the sonnets to the youth, Shakespeare also refers to his "disgrace":[32] "My name be buried where my body is / And live no more to shame nor me nor you." Shakespeare's Sonnets can be seen as a prototype, or even the beginning, of a new kind of "modern" love poetry. During the eighteenth century, The Sonnets' reputation in England was relatively low; as late as 1805, The Critical Review could still credit John Milton with the perfection of the English sonnet. As part of the renewed interest in Shakespeare's original work that accompanied Romanticism, The Sonnets rose steadily in reputation during the nineteenth century.[33] The Sonnets have great cross-cultural importance and influence. They have been translated into every major written language, including German, French, Italian,[34] Japanese,[35] Turkish,[36] Spanish, Portuguese, Russian,[37] Afrikaans, Esperanto, Albanian, Arabic, Hebrew, [38] Welsh and Yiddish.

Sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare’s sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love. Some of them are written to a young man, some of them to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery—why did Shakespeare write them, what was his sexuality?—each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive. Includes exclusive content: In the "Backstory" end materials you can find a short, handy, funny guide to everything you might want to know about Shakespeare and his sonnets.

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With definitive texts and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Wonder of Shakespeare One who reads a few of Shakespeare's great plays and then the meager story of his life is generally filled with a vague wonder. Here is an unknown country boy, poor and poorly educated according to the standards of his age, who arrives at the great city of London and goes to work at odd jobs in a theater. In a year or two he is associated with scholars and dramatists, the masters of their age, writing plays of kings and clowns, of gentlemen and heroes and noble women, all of whose lives he seems to know by intimate association. In a few years more he leads all that brilliant group of poets and dramatists who have given undying glory to the Age of Elizabeth. Play after play runs from his pen, mighty dramas of human life and character following one another so rapidly that good work seems impossible; yet they stand the test of time, and their poetry is still unrivaled in any language. For all this great work the author apparently cares little, since he makes no attempt to collect or preserve his writings. A thousand scholars have ever since been busy collecting, identifying, classifying the works which this magnificent workman tossed aside so carelessly when he abandoned the drama and retired to his native village. He has a marvelously imaginative and creative mind; but he invents few, if any, new plots or stories. He simply takes an old play or an old poem, makes it over quickly, and lo! this old familiar material glows with the deepest thoughts and the tenderest feelings that ennoble our humanity; and each new generation of men finds it more wonderful than the last. How did he do it? That is still an unanswered question and the source of our wonder.

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The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With definitive texts and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are a collection of 154 poems - of which the first 126 are addressed to a young man and deal mainly with expressing obsessional love. Of these, the first 14 sonnets, the so-called precreation sonnets, urge the man to marry and immortalise his beauty by producing offspring. The remaining 28 sonnets are addressed to a woman, of which the last two represent allegories of cupid. This larger format edition is ideal for school or college students. Here, the main benefit is the very wide margins which provide plenty of extra space to add explanatory notes, translations of unfamiliar words and points for further thought. This volume contains the complete and unabridged text in addition to a roomy personal notebook - which means it offers excellent value for money.

The 154 sonnets of William Shakespeare contain some of the best-known, most-quoted lines in the English language. This collection brings dozens of those immortal poems to vivid life. Included here are: Numbers 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"), 147 ("My love is as a fever"), 151 ("Love is too young to know what conscience is"), and many more. Almost everything about the sonnets is controversial: the identity of the recipients, the young man and the Dark Lady, the dates the sonnets were written - and some even question if they were indeed written by the Bard. But their beauty and eloquence are beyond reproach.