September 2022 ShakespeareCAT - Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems

For September, we'll be focusing on Shakespeare's sonnets and poems.

For those wanting to read a lot of Shakespeare's works, you might consider:

       

If your commitment is a lot lighter, consider these collections or single poems for children:

       

Perhaps you prefer a critical work?

       

A retelling? or perhaps some on focused topics?

       

What do you plan to read?

I am most unsophisticated! I do not like poetry, with the exception of some historical narrative poems. However, I'm going to "force" myself to read ten excerpts from Bill's most famous poems. There are commentaries on all ten. I'm reading online here: https://learnodo-newtonic.com/william-shakespeare-famous-poems

ETA I found out that The Rape of Lucrece is a historical narrative poem, so I'm opting to read that! Previews say that Brutus is outraged! Is it the same Brutus, I wonder?

If anyone is after a fictionalised work, there are a number of historical novels about Aemilia Lanyer (Emilia Lanier), who some scholars claim is the 'Dark Lady' referred to in the Dark Lady sequence of sonnets.

The Girl in the Glass Tower
The Dark Lady's Mask
Dark Aemilia
Shakespeare's Mistress

The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare\ is a narrative poem. This event probably did take place because is was chronicled by both Livy and Ovid; however historians are dubious because the accounts are written more than 100 years after the event. It is a good story and Brutus (one of the killers of J. Caesar) is also a character in this narrative poem. I enjoyed this. I read the original alongside a modern translation online here: https://www.litcharts.com/shakescleare/shakespeare-translations/the-rape-of-lucr...
1925 lines in length. As always with Bill, 5 stars! Read for September ShakespeareCAT

Just adding a link to the wiki here, in case anyone wants to add what they've read for the CAT this month: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2022_ShakespeareCAT

>5 christina_reads: I'm so bad about adding to the wiki! Sorry I forgot to put that in the topper.

I read two works today; Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare. They were okay and they didn't take long. I am not a lover of reading poetry though there are some poems that I like.

I read Poetry for Kids: William Shakespeare which was enjoyable for the art work as well as the selections.

The October thread is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/344181.

I read selected sonnets from Shakespeare, including Sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day and Sonnet 55, Not marble, nor the gilded monuments.

In addition to the selected sonnets, I read Though I Know She Lies (by Sara Woods), which takes its title from Sonnet 138, When my love swears that she is made of truth.

I read the Shakespeare volume in the Poetry for Kids series. I would not call it "for kids." It consisted mostly of the poems and play segments high school students memorized back in the late 1970s.