"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme." These lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 55 were extraordinarily prophetic of the enduring power of Shakespeare's poetry throughout subsequent generations. The Oxford English Dictionary credits the Bard with bringing nearly 3,000 new words into the English language, as well as inventing phrases such as "tongue-tied" (The Sonnets), "foregone conclusion" (Othello) and "doing it by the book" (As You Like It). Yet Shakespeare's innovation often paled alongside the ability to fashion an unforgettable phrase, from the passion and desire of Romeo and Juliet to the agonised introspection of Hamlet. The Nation's Favourite Shakespeare offers a taster of the "infinite variety" of Shakespeare's poetry, with its selection of more than 100 speeches, scenes and poems, which takes the reader through the Comedies, Tragedies, Histories and finally The Sonnets. It is a pity that none of the narrative poems such as Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece found their way into the collection. However, this is not a book for the Shakespeare expert. It is for those who want to experience the sheer range and variety of Shakespeare's poetry and in that respect, as Mercutio would say: " 'tis enough, 'twill serve". --Jerry Brotton
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