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4.5 ⭐️


William Shakespeare pictured with wife, Anne Hathaway, who, awkwardly, is not the subject of his famous sonnets.


I read the Sonnets and ‘A Lover’s Complaint�� in ‘The Arden Shakespeare �� Complete Works�� so, strictly speaking, I’ll be reviewing the portion of that much larger book which contains these works. The difference, I believe, is that this individual edition, under which I’m reviewing, has incredibly detailed textual notes and commentary; the Complete Works has merely an introduction.


There are 154 sonnets in the collection and they are not completely random but, in fact, have a kind of narrative order. Sonnets 1-126 are mainly addressed to “the fair youth��, a man younger and of higher social standing than the poet and Sonnets 127-152 to “The Dark Lady��, an unfaithful mistress whose other lovers, in a saucy twist, include the young man! The last 2 sonnets, 153-154, stand independent of the rest and are based on the traditional theme of Cupid and Diana.

The first 17 sonnets, known as ‘The Procreation Sonnets�� are basically Shakespeare playing overbearing mother-in-law, urging the young man to find a fair lady and reproduce while in his prime in order to preserve his illustrious beauty; lamenting time’s tyranny on all things young and mortal. He throws everything but the kitchen sink at this effort; he shames the young man for depriving a woman of reproducing with him, uses musical metaphor to illustrate the harmony of family that he risks missing out on and even, in Sonnet 17, urges the fair youth to reproduce for his own sake; to prove his sonnets true to future readers:

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;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.��
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But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme.

It's actually remarkable, the sheer number of different ways in which Shakespeare was able to say, essentially, the exact same thing in all of the first 17 sonnets. The fact that many of these sonnets are about the same thing does not hurt the readers enjoyment at all due to the broad range of vocabulary and multitude of variations in metaphor. In fact, Shakespeare owns this in sonnet 76, saying (and I apologise for breaking the structure with the excerpt):

�� So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

Even within the inherent restrictions of the sonnet form and iambic pentameter, Shakespeare manages a great variation of rhythm and cadence, utilising beautifully clipped and elongated phrasing (apologies, I’m not down with the poetry lingo).
Despite all this, I can’t help but think: Just let the poor guy be! Let him enjoy his youth and worry about all the serious stuff later! Whither is thy own business, William? Thee would doth well to findeth ’t and mind ’t!


As the sonnet’s progress there are various interesting developments: a rival poet vying for the admiration of the fair youth, a bitter (temporary?) parting of ways and, of course, as we approach the later sonnets, the appearance of the poet’s mistress who fairs decidedly worse than the fair youth in Shakespeare’s praise with the following being about as flattering as it gets:

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

Oh, wait! This one is actually quite lovely:

�� Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted,
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with you alone:

Of course, I have mischievously selected excerpts from these sonnets and, in fact, Shakespeare is just challenging the conventional ways in which beauty is defined but the man must have had cojones the size of watermelons to publish a sonnet saying his mistress had wretched breath. Watermelons or not, I wouldn’t be exposing those bad boys upon your next meeting, nor would I be sleeping over but with one eye open.


I don’t have much to say about ’A Lover’s Complaint�� as, honestly, it was largely impenetrable to me. I could deduce the general idea because, as archaic as it may be, the verse is still in English, but as far as any nuance or deeper meaning, it almost certainly flew over my head. This is one occasion where I was probably in need of further accompanying notes.


I will be coming back to these sonnets in future, taking the advice of two of Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell when they advised to ”Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.��
Though, if we are prepared to twist Shakespeare’s meaning a little to express a return to his thoughts and not our own, then I think he says it best in sonnet 77:

Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.

Adieu.