Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

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Shakespeare’s Sonnets episodes

  • Sonnet 114: Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you
    Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you,
    Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?
    Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,
    And that your love taught it this alchemy,
    To make of monsters and things indigest
    Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
    Creating every bad a perfect best,
    As fast as objects to his beams assemble?
    O! ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing,
    And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:
    Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ‘greeing,
    And to his palate doth prepare the cup:
    If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin
    That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    23 min
  • Sonnet 113: Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind
    Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
    And that which governs me to go about
    Doth part his function and is partly blind,
    Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
    For it no form delivers to the heart
    Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:
    Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
    Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
    For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,
    The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,
    The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
    The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
    Incapable of more, replete with you,
    My most true mind thus maketh mine eye untrue.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    23 min
  • Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth the impression fill
    Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
    Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
    For what care I who calls me well or ill,
    So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
    You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
    To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
    None else to me, nor I to none alive,
    That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
    In so profound abysm I throw all care
    Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
    To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
    Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
    You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
    That all the world besides methinks y’are dead.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    25 min
  • Sonnet 111: O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide
    O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
    The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
    That did not better for my life provide
    Than public means which public manners breeds.
    Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
    And almost thence my nature is subdued
    To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:
    Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed;
    Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
    Potions of eisell ‘gainst my strong infection;
    No bitterness that I will bitter think,
    Nor double penance, to correct correction.
    Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
    Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    20 min
  • Sonnet 110: Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there
    Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there,
    And made my self a motley to the view,
    Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
    Made old offences of affections new;
    Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
    Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
    These blenches gave my heart another youth,
    And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
    Now all is done, have what shall have no end:
    Mine appetite I never more will grind
    On newer proof, to try an older friend,
    A god in love, to whom I am confined.
    Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
    Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    26 min
  • Sonnet 109: O! never say that I was false of heart
    O! never say that I was false of heart,
    Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify,
    As easy might I from my self depart
    As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
    That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
    Like him that travels, I return again;
    Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
    So that myself bring water for my stain.
    Never believe though in my nature reigned,
    All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
    That it could so preposterously be stained,
    To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
    For nothing this wide universe I call,
    Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    26 min
  • Sonnet 108: What’s in the brain that ink may character
    What’s in the brain that ink may character,
    Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
    What’s new to speak, what now to register,
    That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
    Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
    I must each day say o’er the very same;
    Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
    Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
    So that eternal love in love’s fresh case,
    Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
    Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
    But makes antiquity for aye his page;
    Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
    Where time and outward form would show it dead.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    25 min
  • Sonnet 107: Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
    Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
    Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
    Can yet the lease of my true love control,
    Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
    The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
    And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
    Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
    And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
    Now with the drops of this most balmy time,
    My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
    Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
    While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:
    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
    When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    25 min
  • Sonnet 106: When in the chronicle of wasted time
    When in the chronicle of wasted time
    I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
    And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
    In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
    Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
    Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
    I see their antique pen would have express’d
    Even such a beauty as you master now.
    So all their praises are but prophecies
    Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
    And for they looked but with divining eyes,
    They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
    For we, which now behold these present days,
    Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    26 min
  • Sonnet 105: Let not my love be called idolatry
    Let not my love be called idolatry,
    Nor my beloved as an idol show,
    Since all alike my songs and praises be
    To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
    Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
    Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
    Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
    One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
    Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
    Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
    And in this change is my invention spent,
    Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
    Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,
    Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    18 min

About Shakespeare’s Sonnets

From the publisher's feed

The 154 sonnets that Shakespeare penned are some of the most famous in the world. But have you ever heard them all? This podcast series will take you through them one by one in easy 15 minute…