I found a playlist, which I would consider mediocre, as videos go, but for the geek appeal

[capri0mni]

A playlist of 154 short videos, each roughly a minute in length, each nothing but one or two still images with voice-over (really?! that counts as "video?" pffft!)...

Except:

The images are photos of pages from one of the thirteen extant copies the first edition (1609) copy of Shake-speare's Sonnets; this particular volume now residing in the now residing in the British Library. And the voice-over is each sonnet being read aloud.

Dude's reading is a little bland, imnsho. But I still get a little thrill reading along with early seventeenth century poetry, in seventeenth century spelling, and seventeenth century typography, with the lay-out on the page, and all.

Here's the playlist link:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1C16CA27F7D0EF38

I still think sonnet 31:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWhu_wI30Yo&list=PL1C16CA27F7D0EF38&index=31&feature=plpp_video
has ALL THE SAD

Thy bosom is endear'ed with all hearts
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buri'ed.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.
(Cheer up, Emo!Bard...) Ooh, I just want to hug him into a million tiny pieces ... (don't worry, I wouldn't, really. I might offer him cake).

Sonnet 44:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwM2A7F263Y&list=PL1C16CA27F7D0EF38&index=44&feature=plpp_video
still makes me wonder if Will didn't have the Internet in mind, after all (after all, the Doctor knew him...)

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought
I must attend time's leisure with my moan,
Receiving nought by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

I recited Sonnet 130
http://youtu.be/dFlzMqV0EUc
to Audrey, the other day, to illustrate the point how the sonnets are like mini-essays (of the sort we used to learn to write in school: Three paragraphs, each detailing one point in support of your thesis, and than a conclusion, which explains everything you just said: the three quatrains and the couplet). And her comment, when I'd finished, was: "Gee. I hope he had other skills as a lover, besides giving compliments! ha, ha!"

But I dunno: the more I think about it, the more I think 130 is more romantic than the famous: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" one. Because I'm always suspicious of love based on physical beauty (a. Because, yes, beauty fades, and I'd be scared my lover's affections would fade with it, but also, b. as a "monster," I've never fit that beauty script, anyway, and c. every guy who's tried to use that script on me has always turned out to be a sleaze). I'd rather have someone admit that yes, your breath smells bad, but I still love you more than anyone who gargles with perfume three times a day.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

The closing couplet is the money shot, folks!

(but I'm preaching to the choir, aren't I?)

Comments

[spiralsheep]

If Will was Catholic then sonnet 30 could be read very differently to most people's understanding of it as a description of (mostly) earthly loves. ... It occurs to me that reading the fair young man as Catholicism could be interesting. ... Aaaaaand I see sonnet 44 would work in that context too. I wonder if anyone's ever tried a thorough reading with that in mind (I suppose someone must have). I also wonder what that might make of the Dark Lady.

[capri0mni]

I really should be in the shower, right now, instead of at the computer, so I don't have time to hunt things down. But you have Google-fu, so:

In Sonnet #45, he talks about what's up with the other two elements (Air and Fire -- his thoughts and passion). And he writes of them as being with the object of his affection, who come back to him when he receives news of this other person, and hearing s/he is well...

So I somehow doubt he was thinking abstractly/philosophically, in this particular case, as one doesn't (usually) carry on a pen pal relationship with one's Church.

[spiralsheep]

one doesn't (usually) carry on a pen pal relationship with one's Church

Unless it's been banned from one's country of residence and (secret) love letters become a matter of life or death... although that's not how the sonnet reads to me (physical closeness to an object of devotion that is currently far away, and one could interpret Italy as across sea and land LITERALLY!!1!!). ;-P

Sonnet 73 is interesting with a Catholic reading (human death = death, but yearly death implies future revival)....

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Anyway, I have less interest in what an author intended than in what readers get out of their work. /doesn't perticipate in celebrity culture

A certain person was talking to me recently about "the greatest poem of the [time period]" and I was thinking that I neither read nor write in pursuit of "greatness". My shopping list of hopes and dreams has other priorities. ::wryface::

[capri0mni]

/doesn't participate in celebrity culture

Nor I. But --

One of my favorite ways to pass the time is to chat with fellow writers about the writing process, and how each of us ferment the raw ingredients of our private lives into art which strangers can understand. It doesn't matter to me whether they are famous for their craft, or have no more fame than writing drabbles online.

Reading and speculating about Shakespeare's biography around the writing of his sonnets is one way for me to do that trans-temporally.

Any time I read anything, by the way, whether it's a 400+ year old sonnet, or today's XKCD comic, I think of it as having a conversation with the author... which is what fuels my daydreams of fantasy dinner parties: which authors and friends I would invite, and who I'd sit next to whom...