I found this book quite charming, in a studied, understated way. Warwick Collins' The Sonnets is decribed by Curzon (in an Amazon review) as "as small and perfect as a Hilliard* miniature", and I think that captures it beautifully. It's a novel about Shakespeare's time at Titchfield Abbey in Hampshire in the 1590s when plague had closed the London theatres and he was living in the household of his patron the youthful Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
While there he turns his hand to the sonnet form, and thirty two of the hundred and fifty four appear in the book. The sonnets are set within the story not quite as gem stones in jewellery, more as pieces being fashioned and then displayed on the goldsmith's bench, so we are privy to the events and emotions which inspired the work, the structural constraints or impediments which would become a source of invention, and to the poems' functions from the cathartic to the necessarily obliquely expressive.
This is a very different Shakespeare from that portrayed in Christopher Rush's Will; our man here is quiet, introspective, reflective and contained, but we see his rivalry with Marlowe, his affair with the (putative) 'Dark Lady', his complicated relationship with his patron, from whose lips drop - in casual conversation - the titles of some of the plays as yet to be written:
"I am a magpie, my lord. Whatever shines, I will pilfer."
Imaginative and diverting, I enjoyed this book very much.
*Edited to add: taking note of the comments, here is a link!
You might have hyperlinked "Hilliard miniature" for those of your readers (perhaps I'm the only one) who are not educated enough to know who he was! Now I do and indeed I must have seen some of his work at both Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Why the gem/gold analogy? Is that because (it tells me somewhere) Hilliard was the son of a goldsmith and trained as a jeweler?
Sorry for being so dull today.
Posted by: Dark Puss | 15 January 2010 at 12:31 PM
This one looks good, I shall try to find a copy. I have way too many (if that's possible) books to read.
Posted by: Jennifer | 15 January 2010 at 03:35 PM
Apologies - I assumed knowledge! To link or not to link ....
Nothing more to the analogy than that it struck me as fitting given the way in which the poems are presented.
Posted by: Cornflower | 15 January 2010 at 04:57 PM
I am sure you were right to do so, and it is indeed difficult to know how much to cross-reference. Given that no other reader raised the question I think I was correct in my parenthesised comment.
Your response to my question concerning the gems/gold analogy is very tantalising! Why is it fitting? I think you will be telling me to read the book and make up my own mind :--)
Posted by: Dark Puss | 15 January 2010 at 05:27 PM
I had to look up Nicholas Hilliard too, so you aren't the only one. Once I did I realized I have seen some of the portraits before, e.g. Sir Walter Raleigh.
Posted by: Julie Fredericksen | 15 January 2010 at 05:52 PM
I like the look of this one.
Posted by: Alison | 15 January 2010 at 09:08 PM
Thank you for the link!
Posted by: Dark Puss | 16 January 2010 at 03:15 PM
Thanks for a most interesting post with all the links which I enjoyed. Having studied some of this poetry many years ago I find the author's idea for this book most intriguing! I'll put it on my Wish List.
Posted by: Barbara MacLeod | 16 January 2010 at 07:35 PM
Shame on Dark Puss, Hilliard is one of the great English portraitists, although as far as I'm aware he hardly ever - never? - worked at normal scales, preferring and perfecting the miniature. Clearly there will be no cream with DP's salmon tonight, but if he'd like a very pleasant, non-violent, and elegantly written thriller which turns on some Hilliard miniatures, he might enjoy Michael Innes' Lord Mullion's Secret.
Incidentally, "a Hilliard" is also the name for a near weightless particle, with spin +0.5, which decays without charm just short of a full lap of the LHC!
Posted by: Lindsay | 18 January 2010 at 02:12 PM
Shame no doubt, but at least I was honest ("who are not educated enough") about my shortcomings! I think I might know of the "Hilliard" as a relativistically boosted muon, which would indeed behave as you indicate.
Posted by: Dark Puss | 18 January 2010 at 09:28 PM
I have this on my pile to read and have been looking forward to it. I like the idea of a story much like a miniature (though I must click through your link I'm afraid!).
Posted by: Danielle | 18 January 2010 at 11:36 PM