Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsOnly one of them is perfect
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 9, 2013
I was disillusioned.
But it gets historical points for setting precedent for the perfect poem, and of course it is, if I remember, 153 sonnets. So that says something.
Some of these verses are Shakespeare's romance with whores (especially at the early section of the book), and later they deal in subtle ways with disease and despair.
In a subjective world this would be the perfect book. That's what I'm inclined to think. But alas, life's properties are oh-so-objective.
Nonetheless, I devoted a one-pager in my 1-Page-Classics to the subject of Shakespeare's sonnets, titled "Shakespeare's Peinn". I was tempted upon reading the sonnets to think that some of the thoughts might be better summarized as haiku. But that is modern taste.
Some people need to go to the original. He is a kind of god of poetry. But more remembered for theatre, sorry to say.
I do recommend this book, but it was very disappointing. That's why it's three stars. Some points for vocabulary, but not as much as I expected. Not too many neologisms, at this distance through time. (I heard once he invented the word "assassin").
