Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides methinks y'are dead.
Why are Shakespeare's sonnets so convoluted?
Don't say it's his Elizabethan language, because I've read Elizabethan poems that are straightforward. He uses a convoluted and cryptic style.
>>7626580
>dismissing an objectively great writer
>calling him "convoluted" and "cryptic" because you can't into reading
Shakespeare is Shakespeare, pleb. keep reading until you understand, or remain lazy and uncultured. I know it is a lot more difficult than reading Bukowski or 4chan shitposts, but when you are on Will's turf, you have to compromise.
>>7626651
I am not dismissing him, I am saying that his sonnets are written in a convoluted style.
My problem with it is not that it is difficult, it's that it is unpleasant.
>>7626670
The Sonnets seem to have been printed without his permission. With lots of mistakes and errors, probably from handwritten copies of copies...
It's unclear that some weren't meant to be totally private perhaps with unknown meanings etc. Some are from vastly different times than others in his career...
Shakespeare was pretentious as hell
>>7626680
>It's unclear that some weren't meant to be totally private perhaps with unknown meanings etc.
This is the impression that I get while reading them, namely, that they are purposefully cryptic because they are part of some fun Elizabethan court game where lovers would speak to each other in code.
You have to really sit down and parse many of the lines. You can't please an audience with them.
>>7626580
i'm not sure where your problem is here, this is one of the most beautiful things i've read in quite some time. an incredible profession of love, absolutely genius.
>>7626691
How much poetry have you read? If you've read some poetry you should be able the convolution in his style.
has to do with the world twice.
Some poets just have an interesting way of describing things, just look at Emily Dickinson:
Apparently with no surprise,
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play,
In accidental power.
The blond assassin passes on.
The sun proceeds unmoved,
To measure off another day,
For an approving God.
>>7626693
a bit of dante, some milton, not a lot. i see convolution, but when you parse it, you can tell what he's saying, that all the world besides methinks y'are dead is an incredible line. i think the convolution if anything adds to it, gives it a more potent effect, no love like this could be easily expressed anyway.
