Such Is My Love : A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets

Rating:
Summary: A stunning work of criticism
Review: Given the importance of this book, I find myself puzzled by thefact that I am the first to review it..., but am delighted tohave the opportunity. This book was a real milestone when itappeared. In a very factual, unbiassed but totally proficient andpersuasive way it demonstrated in great detail that the persona of thepoems is presented, through them..... Sonnet 20 is of course a crucial targetfor Pequigney, and he reads it superbly, but he is hardly less good ona great many other of Shakespeare's wonderful poems, and is by nomeans narrow or obsessive about his point of view: on the contrary, hehas an excellent notion of how his argument fits into a wider schemeof things. Those who read the poems in Katherine Jones's disappointingArden 3 edition will realise, if they examine Pequigney's work, thatthat editor's claims about the supposed novelty of her views on thebisexuality presented within the poems is greatly exaggerated, andthat Pequigney makes many of the important points both earlier andbetter. Anyone seriously interested in the Sonnets will want to readthis book, which I would rank as one of the most significant and bestworks concerned with those poems: more essential to read than, forexample, John Kerrigan's edition, competent though that is, and insome ways more to the point than Stephen Booth's excellenttome. Someone reading both Pequigney and Helen Vendler would perhapsbenefit more from those two books than any others, though I wouldrecommend using Ingram and Redpath's edition of the Sonnets alongsidethese critical works....