Customer Reviews
Of sugar and spice - By: Jon Chambers, 19 Aug 2008 
Arden's third series illuminates the continually-shifting priorities of the moment as well as the Shakespearean texts themselves. Katherine Duncan-Jones devotes less space to such arcane matters as the practices of the Jacobean printing house & relatively more to what we now consider to be all-important: the sonnets, their meaning & literary significance. Having said this, she does deal with technical issuesin a (mercifully) succinct & lucid manner. The vexed questions of dating & dedicatee identification, meanwhile, receive more expansive treatment. She considers that although some sonnets were obviously written before Meres's first mention of themin 1598 ('sugred Sonnets among his private friends') most were the products of the mature, Jacobean Shakespeare - hence their often knotty complexity & their relatively bitter, 'salty' tone. It is an unconventional view, like many othersin this radically different edition. More conventionally, Mr W.H. is confidently identified as William Herbert.
By any account, this is an erudite, thoroughly researched & thoroughly readable edition with sonnet-by-sonnet annotations that don't assume undue expertise. Unlike previous Arden editions, therefore, this third series one is ideal for readers wanting an in-depth & accessible analysis of poems that have long had the reputation of being difficult ('laboured perplexities',in the words of the C18 Shakespeare scholar, George Steevens).
Duncan-Jones is herself often highly ingenious. Certain sonnets she considers numerologically significant. She detects a 'strongly misogynistic bias' throughout the sequence. Even those sonnets addressed to a female (ie 127-54) arouse her suspicions that the speaker has a male audiencein mind as he exhibits a strong distaste for the female form generally & for 'the negative connotations of menstruation'in particular. These suspicions are strengthened on realising that the total number of these 'Dark Lady' sonnets is 28 - one for each day of the lunar cycle. (Duncan-Jones is the first to draw our attention to this detail.) Other numerical correspondences are more literary. The great central sequence (18-126) comprises 108 sonnets, thereby matching Sidney's collection. Sonnet 12, meanwhile, alludes to the number of hoursin a day; 60 to hour/'our minutes'; 70 (threescore & ten) is followed by the sonnet which begins 'No longer mourn for me when I am dead'; 144 is concerned with the 'gross'-ness of his evil angel, & so on. Whether or not such decoding has unearthed Shakespeare's original intentions, there is no doubt that the sonnets were written for a highly sophisticated literary culture that, unlike ours, 'knew the rules' governing cryptic conceits.
But if the sonnets themselves aren't sufficiently full of puzzles, here's another:in her Preface, Duncan-Jones claims to have 'avoided' John Kerrigan's 1986 Penguin edition, although 'excellentin its subtlety & scholarship', for fear of over-reliance. Yet apart from both agreeing that 'A Lover's Complaint' is an integral part of the overall scheme (sonnets-complaint, following Samuel Daniel's model, Delia) their rival editions seem poles apart. He (JK) guards against using the sonnets to speculate about Shakespeare the man & is dismissive of such fantasies & 'crackpot theories'. She (KD-J) considers the sequence's title, 'Shakespeare's Sonnets', of paramount importance, & one, moreover, that invites, & even positively insists upon, autobiographical inference. Shein turn is dismissive of editors & critics who avoid confronting the poems' homoeroticism by speaking, for example, of the cult of 'comradely affectionin literature' (Kerrigan). Her verdict on such thoughts: 'Sidney Lee lives!' (Lee being a critic who, immediately after Oscar Wilde's imprisonment, sought to conceal the Sonnets' potentially explosive homoeroticism. For respectable Victorians, the Sonnets were overspiced.) So much for excellence, subtle scholarship & potential over-reliance.
Combative, therefore, as well as eloquent, this edition doesn't so much fence-sit as hurdle them full-on. Whether you agree with Duncan-Jones's stance or not, there's no denying that her case is vigorously pursued & her evidence presented with skill. Admirably, her edition preserves the arrangement of the 1609 Quarto together with much of its spelling & punctuation on the grounds that excessive modernising of spelling resultsin blurring potential double meanings. And punctuation? Her edition is the first modern one to restore the empty parentheses at the end of the six-couplet 'Sonnet' 126. The two pairs of brackets, she believes, represent the graves awaiting the bodies of poet & 'lovely Boy'.
Definitely not the last words on the Sonnets. But some of the more alluring, nonetheless.
Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage - By: Themis-Athena, 31 Jan 2007 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 - moreoverin such a limited review? Forget Goethe's "universal genius" & his rebel contemporary Schiller; forget the 19th century masters; forget contemporary literature: with the possible (!) exception of three Greek gentlemen named Aischylos, Sophocles & Euripides, a certain Frenchman called Poquelin (a/k/a Moliere), & that infamous Irishman Oscar Wilde, there's more witin a single line of Shakespeare's thanin an entire page of most other, even great, authors' works. And I'm not saying thisin ignorance of, orin order to slight any other writer: it's precisely my admiration of the world's literary giants, past & present, that makes me appreciate Shakespeare even more - & that although I'm aware that he repeatedly borrowed from pre-existing material & 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; & 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 & Stella" - is an even greater guessing game than that of his plays: although #138 & #144 (slightly modified) appearedin 1599's "Passionate Pilgrim," most were probably circulated privately, & written years before their first - unauthorized, though still authoritative - 1609 publication; possibly beginningin 1592-1593.
Format-wise, they adopt the Elizabethan fourteen-line-structure of three quatrains of iambic pentameters expressing a series of increasingly intense ideas, resolvedin a closing couplet; with an abab-cdcd-efef-gg rhyme form. (Sole exceptions: #99 - first quatrain amplified by one line - #126 - six couplets & only twelve lines total - #145 - writtenin tetrameter - & #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 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 first seventeen, possibly commissioned by the addressee's family, pressing his marriage & production of an heir), & ##127-152 (or 127-133 & 147-152) to an exotic woman of questionable virtues only known as "The Dark Lady," evenin 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 & its double meaning(s) (exactly fourteenin the naughty #135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will;" & sevenin the similarly mischievous #136), & 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 & #60 (time: twelve hours to both day & night; sixty minutes to an hour); &in the famous #55, which praises poetry's everlasting power & as whose never-expressly-named subject Shakespeare himself emergesin a comparison with Horace's Ode 3.30 -in turn writtenin first person singular & 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 & complexity, Shakespeare's sonnets owe their timeless appeal to their supreme compositional values, the universality of their themes, & their keen insights into the human heart & soul; as much as their transcendence of the era's poetic conventions which, following Petrarch, heavily idealized the addressee's qualities: a form new & exciting twohundred years earlier, but encrustedin clichein 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-, silver-, snowy-, swan-white) skinned, pearl-teethed, honey- (nectar-, music-) tongued, goddess-like objects. "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;" the Bard countered, proceeded to describe her breasts as "dun," her hair as "black wires," & her breath as "reek[ing]," & denied her any divine or angelic attributes. "And yet," he concluded: "by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare."
Arguably, Shakespeare's very choice of addressees (a young man - also the subject of the famously romantic #18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day;" the first of several sonnets promising his immortalizationin poetry - as well as the "Dark Lady,"in turn introduced under the notion "black is beautiful"in #127) itself suggests a break with tradition; & compared to his contemporaries' poetry, even the equally-famous #116's on its face rather conventional praise of love's constancy ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments"), echoedin the poet's vow to vanquish timein #123, sounds fairly restrained. But ultimately, Shakespeare's sonnets - like his entire work - simply defy categorization. They are, as rival Ben Jonson acknowledged, written "for all time," just as the Bard himself immodestly claimed:
'Gainst death & all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Evenin the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
(Sonnet 55.)
Brilliant edition - By: Catfish, 06 Jul 2006 Katherine Duncan-Jones provides very detailed & thorough notes for the sonnets, making your reading of them so much richer & more rewarding. I have discovered so much about Shakespeare himself & about the timesin which he lived while reading all the annotated sonnets, it has been a fascinating discovery. There is also a very clear, & interesting introduction covering aspects such as authorship of the sonnets & themes. If you're serious about Shakespeare or just need clarification of the meaning of the sonnets, this book will do it beautifully.
Wonderful writing - By: , 22 Jun 2005 As a student lucky enough to have studied quite a selection of Shakespeare's work, my respect for the man & his writing is immense. The sonnets offer the reader an opportunity to get into Shakespeare's head, to understand him & his relationships. Of course, little is known for sure about the context of the sonnets, the first section addressed to Shakespeare's lover known as "the young man" & suspected to be the Earl of Southampton, the second to the mysterious & unconventionally attractive "dark lady."
In my opinion, Shakespeare's writings about love are more beautiful, romantic & magical than any I have ever read. The sonnets are, perhaps disappointingly, not all beautiful & romantic. They reveal darkness & inner turmoil - jealousy, destruction, unhealthy & immoral, guilt-inducing indulgence. Shakespeare reveals his insecurity, & questions his role as poet & lover throughout the sonnets.
The sonnets are witty & beautifully written, crammed with naughty double-entendres (eg sonnet LXXV), grittily corporal images (LXXXI), rebellion against Petrarchan & contemporary conventions (CXXX), & simply beautiful writing on love (CXVI), & of course the immortal XVIII. The Arden edition is typically useful, with definitions & contextual information - great for students.
brilliant collection - By: , 07 Jul 2003 This book is a must for anybody interestedin sonnets & Shakespeare. You can pick this book up when you've got five minutes to spare & just read a couple of the sonnets. The book offers guidance for readers by providing notes & a commentary to each sonnet on the same page as the text. This makes the sonnets much more accessible for those of us who need a bit of help interpreting their meanings. It also indicates common links that exist between the different sonnets & refers to links between Shakespeare's sonnets & plays. The collection also includes a detailed (if not heavy) introduction that discusses the different context of Shakespeare's works. I would strongly advise any body (particularly students of English) to purchase this collection. However, it isn't just a collection for those who wish to study Shakespeare but I've found it a most enjoyable read.
