So I hate Shakespeare's sonnets. Perhaps only a cretin would admit in public that she hates Shakespeare's sonnets; if so, then pass me my cretin hat. I have 25 to go (hey! that's only 350 lines!) and I am going to do a celebratory dance when I finish the last one. I hope the cretin hat has sturdy straps so it won't fall off.
I had read perhaps a dozen of the sonnets before now. I made my son memorize "That time of year thou may'st in me behold" when we were homeschooling. I expected to like the sonnets, because they have a reputation for sublimity, for unsurpassed wordsmithery.
Maybe I need a cretin T-shirt too. Or should that be a cretin doublet?
I find them contrived, repetitive, hard to parse, and generally not worth the effort. (Cretin pants, right here!) I know it is a little silly to complain about contrivance in Shakespeare, given that I have enjoyed plays in which two pairs of separated-at-birth twins cause havoc, a statue comes to life, and a person sprouts (for heaven's sake) a donkey's head. That's not even considering all those happy last-minute marriages born of verbal sparring matches between cross-dressed minor nobles. Maybe it's because the comedies are fun, and funny, whereas the sonnets are so dang earnest that I have to roll my eyes. (Cretin socks? Those are for me.)
I also hate the meta flavor of the sonnets, the reminders ad nauseam that the youth is going to die but he'll live on in these poems. It reminds me of bad hip-hop: yo, my baby's hot and my rhymes are dope. (Now the hip-hop lovers are tossing me a cretin scarf.)
Do you remember the scene in That Hideous Strength where Jane is tortured by thugs but escapes to safety? As she is recuperating she requests a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets. I always thought that reading the sonnets all in a row must induce transports of delight. But now I wonder if Jane just knew she needed a nap.
(Yeah, yeah, pass me the cretin mittens and I'll be going.)
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