Shakespeare's Sonnets???

Question:No offence to anyone or anything....
but is this collection of love poems just a load of absolute difficult twaddle??
Maybe its just me.....
dont get me wrong, they are wonderful pieces of literature, i just dont understand them at all
and i'm Grade A English Literature
help??

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: No offence to anyone or anything....
but is this collection of love poems just a load of absolute difficult twaddle??
Maybe its just me.....
dont get me wrong, they are wonderful pieces of literature, i just dont understand them at all
and i'm Grade A English Literature
help??

Look up sonnet 18, probably his most famous. "Shall I compare thee to a summers day..."

In this case the summers day is a metaphor for beauty, with Shakespear going on to find flaws in the summers day that do not exist in the person to whom the poem is directed. Once you get past the thees, thou's and hath's its not too hard. It only took my Vietnamese students half an hour to work it out. See if you cant find someone to help you with the metaphors, as some of them can get incredibly over-extended and tangled, no matted how beautiful his iambic pentameter.
Hope that helps, if not then email me the one you're stuck on and ill try to explain further.

You have to get used to the language used in the sonnets, and if you find it difficult, you should use a good edition with good notes. I recommend the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition or the edition by Stephen Booth (Yale) who gives all the different interpretations.

It's you and your probably-lousy educational institution, if you think Shakespeare's sublime sonnets are "twaddle".

As the first post said, it's the language/vocabulary that creates difficulty. Also knowing the historical background of the day helps me with poetry, etc. The sonnets are supposed to equate how a person is feeling about love.