The sonnets

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate..." It is one of the most memorable and memorised lines of poetry of all time. But there is no need to stop here because the beginning of one of William Shakespeare's sonnets is the entry point to a treasury of his great verse. 'The Sonnets' contains 154 examples of the one-stanza, 14-line poems written by The Bard. They take you on a sweeping journey through themes including love, infidelity, mortality and destruction - and the previously barely-touched areas of homoeroticism and misogyny. As with his peerless plays, Shakespeare shows his unique gift for touching hearts and challenging minds. This is perfect for fans of T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' and 'The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats'. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor who is considered to be the world's greatest dramatist. He wrote 39 plays, 154 sonnets and three narrative poems. His plays are still performed more often than those of any other writer, living or dead. He invented more than 1,700 words that are in common use today, including frugal, gnarled, obscene and sanctimonious. Among his best-known plays are the comedies 'As You Like It' and 'Much Ado About Nothing', the histories 'Richard III' and 'Henry V' and the tragedies 'Hamlet' and 'Romeo and Juliet' which Baz Luhrmann brought to the big screen in the blockbuster hit starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.