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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.3
EAN num: 9780300085068
ISBN number: 0300085060
Label: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 616
Printing Date: July 11, 2000
Publishing house: Yale University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 82379
Studio: Yale University Press
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Product Description:
This prize-winning work provides a facsimile of the 1609 Quarto printed in parallel with a conservatively edited, modernized text, as well as commentary that ranges from brief glosses to substantial critical essays. Stephen Booth's notes help a modern reader toward the kind of understanding that Renaissance readers brought to the works.
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Rated by buyers -
Is there anything or anyone to compare to Shakespeare? You can never just read Shakespeare or even begin to feel the passion of his Sonnets until you get to know him. This is truly a wonderful edition of his work and a perfect gift for the lover of his writings. Poetry such as this Elizabethan prose is no longer written , the emotions,passions,tragedies are from yesteryear but as magnificent yesterday as they were so long ago when such expression was a way of life. An excellent addition to any collection of prose or Shakespeare.
Rated by buyers -
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
(Sonnet 26.)
How to do justice to the legacy of literary history's greatest mind - moreover in such a limited review? Forget Goethe's "universal genius" and his rebel contemporary Schiller; forget the 19th century masters; forget contemporary literature: with the possible (!) exception of three Greek gentlemen named Aischylos, Sophocles and Euripides, a certain Frenchman called Poquelin (a/k/a Moliere), and that infamous Irishman Oscar Wilde, there's more wit in a single line of Shakespeare's than in an entire page of most other, even great, authors' works. And I'm not saying this in ignorance of, or in order to slight any other writer: it's precisely my admiration of the world's literary giants, past and present, that makes me appreciate Shakespeare even more - and that although I'm aware that he repeatedly borrowed from pre-existing material and that even the (sole) authorship of the works published under his name isn't established beyond doubt. For ultimately, the only thing that matters to me is the brilliance of those works themselves; and quite honestly, the mysteries continuing to enshroud his person, to me, only enhance his larger-than-life stature.
The precise dating of Shakespeare's sonnets - like other poets', a response to the 1591 publication of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella" - is an even greater guessing game than that of his plays: although #138 and #144 (slightly modified) appeared in 1599's "Passionate Pilgrim," most were probably circulated privately, and written years before their very first - unauthorized, though still authoritative - 1609 publication; possibly beginning in 1592-1593.
Format-wise, they adopt the Elizabethan fourteen-line-structure of three quatrains of iambic pentameters expressing a series of increasingly intense ideas, resolved in a closing couplet; with an abab-cdcd-efef-gg rhyme form. (Sole exceptions: #99 - very first quatrain amplified by one line - #126 - six couplets & only twelve lines total - #145 - written in tetrameter - and #146 - omission of the second line's beginning; the subject of a lasting debate.) Their order is thematic rather than chronological, although beyond the fact that the very first 126 are addressed to a young man - maybe the Earl of Pembroke or Southampton, maybe Sir Robert Dudley, the natural son of Queen Elizabeth's "Sweet Robin," the Earl of Leicester - (the very first seventeen, possibly commissioned by the addressee's family, pressing his marriage and production of an heir), and ##127-152 (or 127-133 and 147-152) to an exotic woman of questionable virtues only known as "The Dark Lady," even in that respect much remains unclear; including the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with the two main addressees, regarding which the sonnets' often ambiguous metaphors invoke much speculation. #145 is probably addressed to Shakespeare's wife; the closing couplet plays on her maiden name ("['I hate' from] hate away she threw And saved my life, [saying 'not you']:" "Hathaway - Anne saved my life"), several others contain puns on the name Will and its double meaning(s) (exactly fourteen in the naughty #135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will;" and seven in the similarly mischievous #136), and the last two draw on the then-popular Cupid theme. Sometimes, placement seems linked to contents, e.g., in #8 (music: an octave has eight notes), #12 and #60 (time: twelve hours to both day and night; sixty minutes to an hour); and in the famous #55, which praises poetry's everlasting power and as whose never-expressly-named subject Shakespeare himself emerges in a comparison with Horace's Ode 3.30 - in turn written in very first person singular and thus, denoting its own author as the builder of its "monument more lasting than bronze" ("Exegi monumentum aere perennius") - as well as through the number "5"'s optical similarity to the letter "S," making the sonnet's number a shorthand reference for "5hake5peare" or "5hakespeare's 5onnets," echoed by numerous words containing an "S" in the text.
Of indescribable linguistic beauty, elegance and complexity, Shakespeare's sonnets owe their timeless appeal to their supreme compositional values, the universality of their themes, and their keen insights into the human heart and soul; as much as their transcendence of the era's poetic conventions which, following Petrarch, heavily idealized the addressee's qualities: a form new and exciting twohundred years earlier, but encrusted in cliche in the late 1500s. Indeed, Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" Sonnet #130 owes its particular fame to its clever puns on that very style, which went overboard with references to its golden-haired, starry- (beamy-, sparkling, sunny-) eyed, cherry- (strawberry-, vermilion-, coral-) lipped, rosy- (crimson-, purple-, dawn-) cheeked, ivory- (lily-, carnation-, crystal ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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Who is to judge Shakespeare? Here all I can question is the medium. I purchased this book expecting normal sized print as it is a dimensionally larger than average sized paperback. Ironically however, the print in this edition is rather smallish, compressed, and often smudged throughout the book.
If want want a scholarly text this is a good one. However, if you wear reading glasses and simply want to read Shakespeare's Sonnets in a relaxed way without squinting, you may want to look elsewhere.
Rated by buyers -
I once had a philosophy professor who memorized a new sonnet every day, perhaps because he felt there is so much to learn from each one. Unpacking a sonnet, really making it your own, is a beautiful and intensely laborious process.
Booth helps. This edition gives the sonnets in a clean, contemporary, sensibly edited typeface, and on the facing page a facsimile of the 1609 edition of the sonnets, so you never have to choose between readability and historical rececption. You get both. Plus, Booth gives precise supporting material for each poem, crystallizing a few hundred years of thought and meditation into an easily referenced appendix. Best part: it's cheap and there are tons of used copies around.
Good stuff!
Rated by buyers -
This is an amazing book - excellent for the student of Shakespeare. Wonderful reference and resource book to keep on hand. More information than any other collection of sonnets I've seen.
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