But wait, there's more - you also get "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", and "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments." And with the sonnets you get all that intrigue about whether Shakespeare and the "fair youth" were lovers, and whether the mysterious "dark lady" was of African descent. Delve in and you might start wondering if there's a code to the Holy Grail somewhere in there.

The book comes in a choice of three covers: a general edition, a Dark Lady edition, and the one I have, the Fair Youth edition. The cover of the last shows a 16th-century painting by Pontormo in which two young men gaze intensely at the viewer, apparently just now distracted from a written document one is holding and the other pointing to. The picture captures how the written word can draw people together, not just intellectually, as on the internet, but physically. "There is more life in one of your fair eyes," says Shakespeare, "than both your poets can in praise devise" (Sonnet LXXXIII). Whatever one's literary skills, one has to see a person's eyes to have a thought like that.

View the different covers at the publisher's website.
Available at Amazon.co.uk. Outside the UK, or to order a specific cover, email the distributor, Combined Book Services (UK), or call +44 1892 837171, and refer to the ISBN desired.
(three people 'General' cover) SONNETS SHAKESPEARE ISBN: 9781901285994
(two women 'Dark Lady' cover) SONNETS SHAKESPEARE ISBN: 9781901285994 MSONDL
(two men 'Fair Youth' cover) SONNETS SHAKESPEARE ISBN: 9781901285994 MSONFY
Gift Set (a set of all three editions/covers) priced at £30. ISBN 978 1 906548 00 1