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Mar. 19th, 2012 11:32 pmToday's thing about which I have unexpectedly strong feelings: the apostrophe often printed in the second line of sonnet 130, "Coral is far more red than her lips' red". It's perfectly horrid and I despise it. Read a completely elided "are" instead, thus: "Coral is far more red than her lips red". Grammatical in itself, it also provides a parallel construction to the next two lines, with all three using good strong adjectives.
Isn't that so much better than forcing the second "red" to be an awkward (and unique within the poem) abstract noun, "the red of her lips"?
(Turns out there is no apostrophe in the 1609 edition. Hah! We can gloss over the fact there was no consistent use of the genitive apostrophe at the time, or for a century or more afterwards…)
Isn't that so much better than forcing the second "red" to be an awkward (and unique within the poem) abstract noun, "the red of her lips"?
(Turns out there is no apostrophe in the 1609 edition. Hah! We can gloss over the fact there was no consistent use of the genitive apostrophe at the time, or for a century or more afterwards…)
