My favorite is 114, I think. "Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed..."

I need pie, or a meatball sub. Or, BOTH!

I feel like an uneducated hick for liking the sonnets.

Oh, God, then I'm the biggest loser ever, because I have the frontispiece from the 1609 quarto tattooed on my arm.

I love the Sonnets more than any other book ever written. I think it's the best book of poetry ever written, the alpha and omega. It's just that they're so complex and bitter and gorgeous and wonderful and the story they tell is such a quintessence of heartbreak and the frailties of the human heart that it pains me to see "Let me not to the marriage of true minds..." used in a wedding ceremony, because that poem is not at all about everlasting love.

The thing with the Sonnets is that they can't be extricated from each other; the sequence tells a story, and each one depends on the others for its full meaning.

Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets is the only book I've ever read that comes close to exploring the whole sequence fully, with analyses of diction and meter (like, complete with graphs and stuff). It's incredible, and well worth the dense read.

My favorite is "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes". I don't care who/why/what it was written for, that's a glorious piece of poetry.

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The thing with the Sonnets is that they can't be extricated from each other; the sequence tells a story, and each one depends on the others for its full meaning.

I didn't (and wouldn't have) used any of the sonnets in my own wedding, but I'm not so big on authorial intent/meaning with poetry. My experience with it is the opposite of absolute. I generally enjoy learning authorial intent, or reading different theories on it, but I don't let it affect where the poem hits me, e.g. Frost's The Road Not Taken.

Oh, I absolutely think the emotional effect of a poem is just as important / valid / meaningful / totally personal as the "critical" version, and in a way I almost wish I hadn't done so much studying of them from the lit crit standpoint, because now I can't read them as untempered love poems anymore.

But the emotional truth of it is as unique as the reader, and the beauty of poetry is that it's like particle theory in physics; the act of observing the poem changes it, and changes it with each individual observation. My "truth" of the sonnets, which I have been big-mouthed and opinionated about here, is just that -- only mine. Everyone else should love the sonnets on their own terms, from "Y'know, I love that 'marriage of true minds' sonnet, and I don't care what anyone else thinks of it; to me it speaks of true love, and I'm going to use it in my wedding, so screw you, Cervix Lady!" to "I hate poetry, please let's talk about something else."

it pains me to see "Let me not to the marriage of true minds..." used in a wedding ceremony, because that poem is not at all about everlasting love.

Er....really?

Man, I hate feeling ignorant. Particularly about something that I love. Because it's like -- I don't really love what I thought I loved, you know?

The biggest thing about Shakespeare that intrigues me is that he seems to be the perfect example of "genius comes from anywhere." One of the arguments in the "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" kerfuffle is that a guy with a basic education couldn't have written such perfect descriptions of love, hate, longing etc. He read whatever he could get his hands on, apparently, and he had the knack. Not all writers have the knack, of being able to string the words together correctly. It's one of the things that I could be tempted to consider my soul as a fair price for, Shakespeare's knack.

Heh. One of Shaw's big weaknesses, was his constant sniping at Shakespear. Sheer jealousy by a minor genius of a major one.

Oh, God, then I'm the biggest loser ever, because I have the frontispiece from the 1609 quarto tattooed on my arm.

Really? That's so cool. I want one.

One of Shaw's big weaknesses, was his constant sniping at Shakespear. Sheer jealousy by a minor genius of a major one.

Shaw also thought that sex was icky, and that in the future we'd evolve into perfect beings that wouln't have sex.