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Sonnets
- Narrated by: Sir John Gielgud
- Length: 1 hr and 50 mins
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Great first listens
Publisher's summary
Here are 154 poems performed by by the wonderful Sir John Gielgud in this Shakepseare collection of the Sonnets.
Shakespeare's sonnets deal with such themes as the passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled Shake-Speares Sonnets: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. The quarto ends with "A Lover's Complaint", a narrative poem of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal.
The first 17 sonnets, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are ostensibly written to a young man, urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalise his beauty by passing it to the next generation. Other sonnets express the speaker's love for a young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress; and pun on the poet's name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to the "little Love-god" Cupid.
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-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
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-
-
Poetry not individually indexed, kinda worthless
- By Musa on 03-11-15
-
All the Sonnets of Shakespeare
- By: William Shakespeare, Paul Edmondson - editor, Stanley Wells - editor
- Narrated by: Kenneth Branagh, Lolita Chakrabarti
- Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How can we look afresh at Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets? What new light might they shed on his career, personality, and sexuality? Shakespeare wrote sonnets for at least 30 years, not only for himself, for professional reasons, and for those he loved, but also in his plays, as prologues, as epilogues, and as part of their poetic texture.
-
-
peaceful
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By: William Shakespeare, and others
-
Shakespeare's Sonnets (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Nick Sandys
- Length: 2 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The secret of their identities has fueled debate for hundreds of years: Who are the nameless nobleman and the dark-haired mistress? And what did they do to inspire the creation of more than 150 deeply intimate poems? Whether William Shakespeare's sonnets are pure fiction or the lingering echo of an autobiographical account, this exquisitely written collection defied traditional love poem conventions to explore the many layers of romance, the dangers of lust, and the nuances of beauty.
-
-
marvelously narrative
- By Anonymous User on 08-25-18
-
The Sonnets
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 3 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone knows something of Shakespeare's sonnets, even if only in memorable fragments like "the darling buds of May", or "remembrance of things past", or "the marriage of true minds". For centuries these wonderfully crafted, intense lyrics have stood for something valued about youth, love, and the emotional complexities belonging to that time of life. This new recording presents all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, using the New Cambridge Shakespeare texts.
-
-
Good reading, great music
- By Michael on 11-02-06
-
The Sonnets
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 154 sonnets of William Shakespeare contain some of the best-known, most-quoted lines in the English language. This collection brings dozens of those immortal poems to vivid life. Included here are: Numbers 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"), 147 ("My love is as a fever"), 151 ("Love is too young to know what conscience is"), and many more. Almost everything about the sonnets is controversial: the identity of the recipients, the young man and the Dark Lady, the dates the sonnets were written - and some even question if they were indeed written by the Bard. But their beauty and eloquence are beyond reproach.
-
-
Excellent Recording, Lousy Transfer
- By Tom on 09-05-08
What listeners say about Sonnets
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- Discerning Customer 112
- 06-24-15
Clear, rhythmical, beautiful
Gave me the desire, means, and ability to learn some favorite Sonnets by heart. Specially recommended to those who might in themselves behold that time of year when yellow leaves, or none. or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold.
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- bobsie67
- 03-21-21
Missing Sonnets
All the 154 sonnets are not included here. About 20 are not on this recording. I enjoyed Gielgud’s performance, but this should not be marketed as including all the sonnets. Other recording are more complete and will have a running time around 2 hours 30 minutes. At least this recording was inexpensive.
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1 person found this helpful