Shakespeares Sonnets" are as important & vital today as they were when first published four hundred years ago. Perhaps no collection of verse before or since has so captured the imagination of readers & lovers; certainly no poem has come under such intense critical scrutiny & presented the reader with such a bewildering number of alternative interpretations. In this illuminating & often irreverent guide Don Paterson offers a fresh & direct approach to the Sonnets asking what they can still mean to the twenty-first century reader. In a series of fascinating & highly entertaining commentaries placed alongside the poems themselves Don Paterson discusses the meaning technique hidden structure & feverish narrative of the Sonnets as well as the difficulties they present for the modern reader. Most importantly however he looks at what they tell us about William Shakespeare the lover
- & what they might still tell us about ourselves."