SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived
Episodes
Sonnet 66: Tired With All These, for Restful Death I Cry
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 66 to all intents and purposes is a rant. In it, William Shakespeare uses his opening line to tell us that he is about to name just some of the...
Sonnet 65: Since Brass, Nor Stone, Nor Earth, Nor Boundless Sea
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 65 brings to a close – at least for the moment – this reflection on the passing of time that started with Sonnet 60 and focused quite heavi...
Sonnet 64: When I Have Seen by Time's Fell Hand Defaced
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With his moving, melancholy Sonnet 64, William Shakespeare continues an ongoing meditation on time, but unlike other sonnets that have gone before ...
Sonnet 63: Against My Love Shall Be as I Am Now
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Sonnet 63, William Shakespeare continues his reflection on his own age and now projects this as a dreaded and near-inescapable reality that will on...
Sonnet 62: Sin of Self-Love Possesseth All Mine Eye
03 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With his most unsparing sonnet so far, Sonnet 62, William Shakespeare finds yet another register and a new level of depth to both his insight into sel...
Sonnet 61: Is it Thy Will Thy Image Should Keep Open
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With Sonnet 61, William Shakespeare returns to the theme treated in Sonnets 27 & 28 of an enforced separation from his lover that robs him of his ...
Special Guests: Sir Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson – The Order of the Sonnets
19 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode, Professor Sir Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson who severally and jointly have written and edited many books on Shakespeare...
Sonnet 60: Like as the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For his quiet mediation on time in Sonnet 60, William Shakespeare once more borrows more or less directly from Ovid's Metamorphoses, a text we k...
Sonnet 59: If There Be Nothing New, But That Which Is
05 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 59 takes us back into the realm of the proverb and the poetic commonplace and wonders how – if the old saying holds true that there is nothin...
Sonnet 58: That God Forbid That Made Me First Your Slave
29 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 58 continues from Sonnet 57 and elaborates on Shakespeare's startling sense of subservience to the young man. It simply picks up from the s...
Sonnet 57: Being Your Slave, What Should I Do But Tend
22 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnets 57 & 58 once again come as a strongly linked pair, and with these sonnets , William Shakespeare positions himself at such a pointedly subs...
Sonnet 56: Sweet Love, Renew Thy Force, Be it Not Said
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 56 is the second sonnet in the series so far in which William Shakespeare addresses not the young man, nor us as the general reader or listener...
Sonnet 55: Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the supremely confident Sonnet 55, William Shakespeare returns to a theme he has handled similarly deftly before: the power of poetry itself to m...
Sonnet 54: O How Much More Doth Beauty Beauteous Seem
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After the turmoil of Sonnets 33 to 42 and the prolonged period of separation signalled by Sonnets 43 to 51, which in turn was followed by a joyous, se...
Sonnet 53: What Is Your Substance, Whereof Are You Made
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The tender and complex Sonnet 53 – just over a third into the series – finds yet another entirely new register and conjures up not only an image o...
Sonnet 52: So Am I as the Rich, Whose Blessed Key
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The astonishingly suggestive Sonnet 52 is the closest William Shakespeare has come so far to answering in his own words the question that has agitated...
Sonnet 51: Thus Can My Love Excuse the Slow Offence
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 51 picks up from the dull-paced journey of Sonnet 50 and contrasts this with the poet's boundless desire for speed once he is on the way ba...
Sonnet 50: How Heavy Do I Journey on the Way
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnets 50 & 51 once again come as a pair, whereby Sonnet 50 evokes in a measured tone of melancholy the sorrow and sadness Shakespeare senses on ...
Sonnet 49: Against That Time, if Ever That Time Come
27 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The soberly solemn Sonnet 49 opens an unnervingly real register that does away with hyperbolic praise, clever contrivance, or poetic acrobatics, and i...
Sonnet 48: How Careful Was I When I Took My Way
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 48 ends the emotional hiatus brought into the sequence by the previous five sonnets and plunges our poet back into a deep anxiety about how muc...
Sonnet 47: Betwixt Mine Eye and Heart a League Is Took
13 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 47 again follows on directly from Sonnet 46, developing the argument further and arriving at a conclusion which is also maybe not altogether su...
Sonnet 46: Mine Eye and Heart Are at a Mortal War
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 46 is the first in a second couple of sonnets that take a more abstract approach to dealing with separation, while employing a fairly establish...
Sonnet 45: The Other Two, Slight Air and Purging Fire
30 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 45 follows on directly from Sonnet 44 as a seamless continuation and therefore needs to be read in tandem with it for it to make sense. With So...
Sonnet 44: If the Dull Substance of My Flesh Were Thought
23 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 44 is the first in two pairs of poems that together sit in a larger group of sonnets which see William Shakespeare spending time away from his ...
Sonnet 43: When Most I Wink Then Do Mine Eyes Best See
16 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 43 leaves behind, for the time-being, the upheaval and upset caused by the young man's betrayal of Shakespeare with his own mistress and pi...
Special Guest: Professor Stephen Regan – The Sonnet as a Poetic Form
09 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode, Stephen Regan, Professor Emeritus at Durham University, who is currently a research associate in the School of Culture and Co...
Sonnet 42: That Thou Hast Her, it Is Not All My Grief
02 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the second of two sonnets that try to deal with the fallout from the young man's infidelity, William Shakespeare contorts himself into an argum...
Sonnet 41: Those Pretty Wrongs That Liberty Commits
25 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 41 is the first of two sonnets in which William Shakespeare tries to make sense of the young man's transgression and to absolve him of any ...
Sonnet 40: Take All My Loves, My Love, Yea, Take Them All
18 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With his forcefully forgiving Sonnet 40, William Shakespeare finally connects us right back to Sonnet 35 and sets out on a short sequence which explai...
Sonnet 39: O How Thy Worth With Manners May I Sing
11 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 39 is the last of four sonnets that seem to disrupt the sequence of events until Sonnet 35, and picks up more or less directly with Sonnet 36 b...
Sonnet 38: How Can My Muse Want Subject to Invent
04 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With his remarkably deadpan Sonnet 38, William Shakespeare changes tone completely and positions his own poetry as the product of the man who has so l...
Sonnet 37: As a Decrepit Father Takes Delight
28 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the first of three sonnets that appear to disrupt the sequence that concerns itself with the young man's evident infidelity, Sonnet 37 revisits...
Sonnet 36: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain
21 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the curious Sonnet 36 William Shakespeare appears to be either inverting the guilt and shame that the previous three sonnets have laid upon the y...
Sonnet 35: No More Be Grieved at That Which Thou Hast Done
14 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With his tormented, paradoxical, and sensationally revealing Sonnet 35, William Shakespeare absolves the young man of his misdeed and puts what has ha...
Sonnet 34: Why Didst Thou Promise Such a Beauteous Day
07 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The devastated and devastatingly powerful Sonnet 34 picks up from where Sonnet 33 wanted to not only leave off but let go, and like a second wave of p...
Sonnet 33: Full Many a Glorious Morning Have I Seen
30 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With Sonnet 33 a new phase begins in the relationship between William Shakespeare and the young man. The storm clouds that gather in this poem are a d...
Sonnet 32: If Thou Survive My Well-Contented Day
23 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The wryly ironic Sonnet 32 marks a caesura in the canon, as it sits right between a development arc in the relationship that spans the sequence uninte...
Sonnet 31: Thy Bosom Is Endeared With All Hearts
16 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the astonishingly bold, borderline brazen, Sonnet 31, William Shakespeare strikes a completely new tone and tells both his young lover and us thi...
Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
09 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 30 picks up on the theme of Sonnet 29 and develops the 'sweet love' remembered there into a reminiscence about lost love, missed opport...
Sonnet 29: When in Disgrace With Fortune and Men's Eyes
02 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most celebrated poems in the canon, Sonnet 29 casts William Shakespeare in a state of deep and lonely unhappiness, from which the memory of...
Sonnet 28: How Can I Then Return in Happy Plight
26 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 28 continues on from Sonnet 27 and develops the thought further, elaborating on the ways day and night appear to conspire to make William Shake...
Sonnet 27: Weary With Toil, I Haste Me to My Bed
19 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 27 is the first of several sonnets in which Shakespeare laments the fact that he is away from his young lover, thus answering the question pose...
Sonnet 26: Lord of My Love, to Whom in Vassalage
12 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The obsequious, so as not to say startlingly submissive, Sonnet 26 radically changes the tone and therefore our perception of the constellation betwee...
Sonnet 25: Let Those Who Are in Favour With Their Stars
05 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The at once defiant and celebratory Sonnet 25 is the first in the series to tell us something about William Shakespeare's own situation in life, and i...
Sonnet 24: Mine Eye Hath Played the Painter and Hath Stelled
26 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the complex and in its conclusion quietly insightful Sonnet 24, William Shakespeare looks more closely at what is happening between him and the y...
Sonnet 23: As an Unperfect Actor on the Stage
19 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The simultaneously self-conscious and also cautiously confident Sonnet 23 counsels the young man in the art of love, and in doing so it becomes the fi...
Sonnet 22: My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old
12 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The superficially traditional and almost a little wistful sounding Sonnet 22 is the first one to address the age difference between William Shakespear...
Sonnet 21: So Is it Not With Me as With That Muse
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The distinctive and sincere Sonnet 21 stands out as the first in the series in which William Shakespeare addresses an unspecified general 'audience' t...
Sonnet 20: A Woman's Face, With Nature's Own Hand Painted
29 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The fabulously frank and somewhat saucy Sonnet 20 takes the proverbial bull by the horn and leads it straight to the elephant in the room, addressing ...
Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, Blunt Thou the Lion's Paws
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The heartfelt, somewhat self-conscious, but defiant and confident Sonnet 19 underlines the bold assertion I, the poet, William Shakespeare, made in...
Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most famous sonnets in the canon, Sonnet 18 bursts onto the scene with an energy, confidence, and message all of its own, setting the tone ...
The Procreation Sonnets
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Procreation Sonnets are something of a conundrum: they are entirely clear in their intention, in their message, and in their poetic purpose, they ...
Sonnet 17: Who Will Believe My Verse in Time to Come
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The intricate, self-aware, and in places truly tender Sonnet 17 is the last one to advise the young man to produce some offspring, which makes it the ...
Sonnet 16: But Wherefore Do Not You a Mightier Way
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The riveting and really rather irony-infused Sonnet 16 directly follows on from Sonnet 15 and completes the argument set up and semi-resolved there. A...
Sonnet 15: When I Consider Every Thing That Grows
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With the somewhat suggestive, slightly cheeky, and categorically confident Sonnet 15, William Shakespeare taps into a whole different register that po...
Sonnet 14: Not From the Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The at first glance curiously anticlimactic Sonnet 14 seems to take us a step back in any real or supposed trajectory that the sonnets so far have des...
Sonnet 13: O That You Were Yourself, But Love, You Are
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The personal, pleading, and particularly revealing Sonnet 13 marks an especially noteworthy change in tone, and it provides one specific detail that n...
Sonnet 12: When I Do Count the Clock that Tells the Time
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the gorgeous, pensive, and mature Sonnet 12, William Shakespeare finds a whole new register to relate a message that is by now familiar, and he rev...
Sonnet 11: As Fast as Thou Shalt Wane, so Fast Thou Growst
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The refreshingly blunt and remarkably utilitarian Sonnet 11 makes a now well established old argument with a couple of surprising new twists and confi...
Sonnet 10: For Shame Deny That Thou Bearst Love to Any
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The spectacular Sonnet 10 boldly goes where no sonnet in the series so far has gone before and radically changes the tone and the dynamic between the ...
Sonnet 9: Is it for Fear to Wet a Widow's Eye
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The multi-layered and marvellously complex Sonnet 9 sets out with an unlikely supposition to make some strongly suggestive statements about the young ...
Sonnet 8: Music to Hear, Why Hearst Thou Music Sadly?
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The quite contradictory because poetically plausible but seemingly lightweight Sonnet 8 makes yet another, maybe somewhat more laboured, attempt at co...
Sonnet 7: Lo! In the Orient When the Gracious Light
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the fascinating Sonnet 7 William Shakespeare draws on a classical image to try and convince the young man that he needs to produce a son: the sun t...
Sonnet 6: Then Let Not Winter's Ragged Hand Deface
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 6 seamlessly follows Sonnet 5 and continues the argument set up there: the poet compares the young man to a flower which, as winter approaches,...
Sonnet 5: Those Hours That With Gentle Work Did Frame
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sonnet 5 together with Sonnet 6 forms the first pair in the series. It sets out to compel the young man to metaphorically distil his essence by produc...
Sonnet 4: Unthrifty Loveliness, Why Dost Thou Spend
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the intriguing fourth Sonnet, William Shakespeare makes what sounds like a fairly abstract case for the young man to now produce an heir. But could...
Sonnet 3: Look in Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the particularly exciting third Sonnet, William Shakespeare counsels the young man to recognise it is time now to have a son so that when he reache...
Sonnet 2: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the second Sonnet of the Procreation Sequence, the poet continues his mission of trying to convince a young man of the need to have children, by pa...
Sonnet 1: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the first Sonnet of the generally accepted and originally published series, William Shakespeare tells a young man of unnamed identity that he is wa...
0 Introduction
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Introduction to SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived. Sebastian Michael gives a brief account of how he fell in...