Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

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Shakespeare’s Sonnets episodes

  • Sonnet 084: Who is it that says most, which can say more
    Who is it that says most, which can say more,
    Than this rich praise, that you alone are you,
    In whose confine immured is the store
    Which should example where your equal grew?
    Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
    That to his subject lends not some small glory;
    But he that writes of you, if he can tell
    That you are you, so dignifies his story.
    Let him but copy what in you is writ,
    Not making worse what nature made so clear,
    And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
    Making his style admired every where.
    You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
    Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    16 min
  • Sonnet 083: I never saw that you did painting need
    I never saw that you did painting need,
    And therefore to your fair no painting set;
    I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
    The barren tender of a poet’s debt:
    And therefore have I slept in your report,
    That you yourself, being extant, well might show
    How far a modern quill doth come too short,
    Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
    This silence for my sin you did impute,
    Which shall be most my glory being dumb;
    For I impair not beauty being mute,
    When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
    There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
    Than both your poets can in praise devise.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    22 min
  • Sonnet 082: I grant thou wert not married to my Muse
    I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
    And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook
    The dedicated words which writers use
    Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
    Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
    Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;
    And therefore art enforced to seek anew
    Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
    And do so, love; yet when they have devis’d,
    What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
    Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz’d
    In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;
    And their gross painting might be better used
    Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    18 min
  • Sonnet 081: Or I shall live your epitaph to make
    Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
    Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
    From hence your memory death cannot take,
    Although in me each part will be forgotten.
    Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
    Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
    The earth can yield me but a common grave,
    When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
    Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
    Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;
    And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
    When all the breathers of this world are dead;
    You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
    Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    17 min
  • Sonnet 080: O! how I faint when I of you do write
    O! how I faint when I of you do write,
    Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
    And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
    To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
    But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
    The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
    My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
    On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
    Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
    Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
    Or, being wrack’d, I am a worthless boat,
    He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
    Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
    The worst was this, my love was my decay.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    18 min
  • Sonnet 079: Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid
    Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
    My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;
    But now my gracious numbers are decay’d,
    And my sick Muse doth give an other place.
    I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
    Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;
    Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
    He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
    He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
    From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,
    And found it in thy cheek: he can afford
    No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.
    Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
    Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    18 min
  • Sonnet 078: So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse
    So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,
    And found such fair assistance in my verse
    As every alien pen hath got my use
    And under thee their poesy disperse.
    Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing
    And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
    Have added feathers to the learned’s wing
    And given grace a double majesty.
    Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
    Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:
    In others’ works thou dost but mend the style,
    And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
    But thou art all my art, and dost advance
    As high as learning my rude ignorance.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    24 min
  • Sonnet 077: Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear
    Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
    Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
    The vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,
    And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
    The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
    Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
    Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know
    Time’s thievish progress to eternity.
    Look what thy memory cannot contain,
    Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
    Those children nursed, deliver’d from thy brain,
    To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
    These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
    Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    22 min
  • Sonnet 076: Why is my verse so barren of new pride
    Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
    So far from variation or quick change?
    Why with the time do I not glance aside
    To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
    Why write I still all one, ever the same,
    And keep invention in a noted weed,
    That every word doth almost tell my name,
    Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
    O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
    And you and love are still my argument;
    So all my best is dressing old words new,
    Spending again what is already spent:
    For as the sun is daily new and old,
    So is my love still telling what is told.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    19 min
  • Sonnet 075: So are you to my thoughts as food to life
    So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
    Or as sweet seasoned showers are to the ground;
    And for the peace of you I hold such strife,
    As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
    Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
    Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
    Now counting best to be with you alone,
    Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure;
    Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
    And by and by clean starvèd for a look;
    Possessing or pursuing no delight
    Save what is had, or must from you be took.
    Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
    Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
    William Shakespeare

    Presenters

    Mark Chatterley
    Thierry Heles
    25 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…