Kristol's Shakespeare

Is it true, as The Economist says in his obituary, that Irving Kristol carried a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets around with him, "to remind him how to put great thoughts in the best and fewest words." If it is true that he did so, did he realize this vain gesture would mark him instantly as a fraud? The sonnets are, as any even moderately informed student of Shakespeare will recognize, about the weakest item in the Shakespearean canon, not to say the least Shakespearean. They have their virtues, of course, but I defy anybody except a specialist to identify any more than a dozen or so (of the 154). Even these display qualities that show Shakespeare at least advantage: they are formal and conventionalized little exercises, more devoted to demonstrating their own cleverness than to conveying any real content. All these limitations themselves may not be disabling in the hands of somebody who was really comfortable with the form--among Shakespeare's contemporaries, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne and John Milton are obvious examples. It may even be that Shakespeare's sonnets at their worst are better than almost any of his contemporaries' at their best. They point is just that they weren't what he was good at, they weren't really Shakespeare. If indeed Kristol sincerely regard them as an exemplum, it says only that he was passing up a chance at something better.