Sonnets
1609
- english sonnets
- history and criticism
- bibliography
- translations into yiddish
- problems, exercises
- translations into german
- english narrative poetry
- spurious and doubtful works
- translations into arabic
- translations into lithuanian
The story
"I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is an elegant and clear text for either the study or the rehearsal room, notes where you need them and the distinguished scholarship of the general editors, Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller who understand that these are plays for performance as well as great texts for contemplation." (Patrick Stewart)
What it’s like
Dense, luminous verse on the page, with the rhythm of a held breath: 154 fourteen-line poems in tight iambic pentameter, each one turning on a volta and often closing on a sharp final couplet. The imagery is tactile and seasonal, with winter boughs, ripening fruit, candlelight burning down, ivory and gold, and sunlight that fades behind clouds, so the sensory world feels rich but always passing. The voice is intimate and argumentative, talking to someone just out of reach, at once tender, jealous, and bitter. Its mood is elegiac and contemplative, a slow ache of desire and time's erosion, with flashes of wit that cut the sorrow. It suits a quiet night with a single lamp, a long unhurried sitting, or a slow reread over a rainy weekend, and it rewards reading a few poems at a time. The emotional arc runs through devotion, betrayal, and a reckoning with mortality, though it has no linear story. Intensity is low on violence and gore; the sensuality is suggested through longing and innuendo rather than explicit description, and the darker notes are emotional rather than frightening. It is for readers who love lyric poetry, slow reflection, and language that aches with the weight of time.
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