Understand Shakespeare's language with this sonnet followed by a modern translation. A limbeck is an old distillation apparatus... Yeah I didn't know that either 🤷‍♂️
When all my acting work got cancelled in the first lockdown, I decided to use the time to start learning all of Shakespeare's sonnets. I hope you find the modern translation afterwards entertaining. 119 down 35 to go!
This poem is both part of the Fair Youth Sonnets & part of the sequence from 87-126 known as the Fickle Youth Sonnets. Sonnets 118-120 share the theme of Shakespeare regretting his unfaithfulness to the Fair Youth and can be performed together as a series.
Sonnet 118 - • Understand Shakespeare...
Sonnet 120 - • Understand Shakespeare...
Sonnet 119 full text:
What potions have I drunk of siren tears
Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessèd never!
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted
In the distraction of this madding fever!
O, benefit of ill! Now I find true
That better is by evil still made better;
And ruined love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
So I return rebuked to my content,
And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.
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Intro music composed & recorded by Joel Goodman.
/ @eppingmusicschool