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The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford World's Classics)
 
 
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The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

by William Shakespeare (Author), Colin Burrow (Editor) "Right honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for..." (more)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 768 pages
  • Publisher: OUP Oxford; annotated edition edition (18 April 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 019281933X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0192819338
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.2 x 3.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 33,717 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #5 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > Shakespeare, William > Sonnets & Poetry
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Product Description

Review
A long and detailed critique, which ends with excellent praise 'This Complete Sonnets and Poems is a distinguished addition to a distinguished series. It will repay comtinuing study, and act as a valuable point of reference for readers concerned more generally with Shakespeare's art and language. Colin Burrow's good sense, tact and balance as an editor are deeply impressive.' (H.R.Woudhuysen, TLS )

Product Description
The Oxford Shakespeare General Editor Stanley Wells The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the works for modern readers - a new, modern-spelling text, collated and edited from all existing printings - on-page and facing-page commentary and notes explain language and allusions - detailed introductions consider the sonnets' biographical and literary background, how the poems relate to the plays, dating and textual matters, and the mysteries of 'Mr W. H.' and the 'Dark Lady' - includes poems attributed to Shakespeare in the seventeenth century - full index to introductions and commentary - durable sewn binding for lasting use 'not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship.' Times Literary Supplement
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First Sentence
Right honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden; only if your Honour seem but pleased I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent edition, 27 Aug 2002
By A Customer
It is good to see Shakespeare's poems and sonnets placed within the context of the rest of his work in this excellent series. Particularly useful is the bringing together of the sonnets with the other poems in this single volume. Whilst the sonnets constitute the best-known of Shakespeare's poetry, there is much to be learned from a reading of them alongside the narrative poems; the editor of this volume takes care to point this out.

The layout of the book is clear and easy to use, with an excellent facing commentary by Colin Burrow, which greatly enriches any reading of the poems. Burrow does a very good job of outlining some of the textual and interpretive complexities of the poems, providing accessible analysis without oversimplifying the difficult issues at stake.

This will be an invaluable reference point for those wishing to engage in scholarly study of the poems, as well as for readers wishing to discover more about this often neglected side of Shakespeare's work. There are real treasures here to be discovered and enjoyed.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent edition, 27 Aug 2002
By A Customer
It is good to see Shakespeare's poems and sonnets placed within the context of the rest of his work in this excellent series. Particularly useful is the bringing together of the sonnets with the other poems in this single volume. Whilst the sonnets constitute the best-known of Shakespeare's poetry, there is much to be learned from a reading of them alongside the narrative poems; the editor of this volume takes care to point this out.

The layout of the book is clear and easy to use, with an excellent facing commentary by Colin Burrow, which greatly enriches any reading of the poems. Burrow does a very good job of outlining some of the textual and interpretive complexities of the poems, providing accessible analysis without oversimplifying the difficult issues at stake.

This will be an invaluable reference point for those wishing to engage in scholarly study of the poems, as well as for readers wishing to discover more about this often neglected side of Shakespeare's work. There are real treasures here to be discovered and enjoyed.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
5.0 out of 5 stars Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage, 2 Nov 2008
By Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
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 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 -- 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 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 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 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-, 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," and her breath as "reek[ing]," and 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 immortalization in poetry -- as well as the "Dark Lady," in turn introduced under the notion "black is beautiful" in #127) itself suggests a break with tradition; and 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"), echoed in the poet's vow to vanquish time in #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 and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
(Sonnet 55.)
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