Shakespeare said ‘my verse will stand’. And, by goodness, it has. More than 400 years after their publication his sonnets live on. Not only in their original do they endure, but also in their influence in the writing of others.
William Shakespeare died 400 years ago on 23 April 1616 and his star shines brighter than ever, a beacon of inspiration and interpretation.
ON SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS seeks to continue the tradition of reinventing Shakespeare while also serving to commemorate his writing in the year of the quatercentenary of his death. In collaboration with the Royal Society of Literature, thirty of their fellows were invited to respond to Shakespeare’s sonnets in their own form, voice and style.
The poems they produced appear alongside the sonnets with which they engage, giving a quick compare and contrast, doubling your quintessential quatrain pleasure, couplet-ting your fun.
Each sonnet has been a source of inspiration, but comes with a shadow that the inspired must conspire to step out of.
That may not be true of the opening gambit, Roger McGough’s What poverty my Muse brings forth(A Cento), a cobbled assembly of 14 opening lines, but by and large the specimens here do – they are something like the sun that ripened them but flourish of their own volition.
Compressed and expansive – John Fuller’s W.S.:The Tithon Sonnets is a quintet, augmented and adorned with footnotes to classical history and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan and Andrew Motion’s Rhapsodies, inspired initially by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12 is a series of four poems that encompass the themes of Sonnets 30, 74 and 146 and include a meditation on daylight saving – some are downright playful and experimental.
Simon Armitage’s take on sonnet 20 will either amuse or affront – a coded response or perhaps Shakespeare a la Sting or Sinatra.
Alan Brownjohn’s brace, two sonnets, adapts the theme of sonnet 65 employing the manner and vocabulary in a slightly updated fashion.
Michael Longley’s response to Sonnet 55 resonates with another centennial commemoration we find ourselves in the middle of, The Great War. Shakespeare would have been packed into many a young soldier’s kitbag. Shakespeare served and continues to serve on all fronts.
The contents of ON SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS are indisputably celebratory and so is the production of the book, a hard cover in royal blue and gold embossed title with a gorgeous burnished blue and gold leaf dust jacket, and royal blue ribbon book mark.
ON SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: A Poets’ Celebration , edited by Hannah Crawforth and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann is published by Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare.