The book you are holding in your hands, dear reader, presents the Great Bard solely as a poet, and with his most popular and representative non-dramatic opus - the Sonnets. But here they reach you in a new Bulgarian sound, subject to a language philosophy different from the familiar ones, internally grounded. ... Perhaps it will be strange or unusual for a certain circle of connoisseurs, but the name that takes responsibility for the fifth Bulgarian version of the Sonnets is that of the poet Kiril Kadiiski. Strange, because he is known to a wide readership primarily as a translator of the French cursed poets and a wide range of Slavic and Russian classical and modern poets. But Kiril Kadiiski is the only Bulgarian translator approaching Shakespeare's sonnet opus, having translated almost all the representative masters of the sonnet both in the West and in the East in Europe, from the first tempted in the genre through the established sonnet writers to their Slavic confreres in the 19th century.
From the Afterword to the edition authored by Prof. Dr. Ludmil Dimitrov
The new edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets comes out within Colibri's new series, which will feature the best of the world's poetic heritage and is aimed at a wider readership. A balance was sought between high artistic value and an aesthetically appropriate vision. We owe the elegant library layout to Ivo Rafailov, and the translation is the work of the poet Kiril Kadiiski.
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. Scholars believe that he died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day.
At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
According to historians, Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets throughout the span of his life. Shakespeare's writing average was 1.5 plays a year since he first started writing in 1589. There have been plays and sonnets attributed to Shakespeare that were not authentically written by the great master of language and literature.
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