Understand Shakespeare's language with this sonnet followed by a modern translation. Fun fact: to get the echo on the inner monologue during the translation I put my phone in an empty bath and spoke through a toilet roll tube... The things I do to entertain you folks, eh?
As I'm in lockdown, I'm using this time to learn all of Shakespeare's sonnets. I hope you find the modern translation afterwards entertaining. 86 down 68 to go!
This poem is both part of the Fair Youth Sonnets & the last in the sequence from 78-86 known as the Rival Poet Sonnets.
Sonnet 86 full text:
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonishèd.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors, of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence.
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.
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Intro music composed & recorded by Joel Goodman.
/ @eppingmusicschool
"Rainbow Connection" written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher.