Author:William Shakespeare
‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom’
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' you can find a short, handy, funny guide to everything you might want to know about Shakespeare and his sonnets.
‘This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love’ Don Paterson, Guardian
The great master who knew everything...an unspeakable source of delight
—— Charles DickensEvery age has reinvented the Bard in its own image. Renaissance Man or post-modern angst... Shakespeare haunts our language
—— IndependentShakespeare was the most consummate genius of all time
—— Peter AckroydDante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them, there is no third
—— T.S. EliotEvery single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as those in Life itself
—— Alexander PopeShakespeare is the best thing that ever happened to this country
—— Roy HattersleyShakespeare modernised the form of the sonnet, and transformed it from a stylised, courtly love shtick to a fluent and flexible form that could turn itself to any subject
—— Don Paterson , Guardian