Understand Shakespeare's language with this sonnet followed by a modern translation. My Google history looks shady after searching for the soundbite right at the end there!
This is the first of two sonnets where Shakespeare admits and tries to justify his infidelities to the Fair Youth. Sonnets 109-110 can be performed as a pair.
Sonnet 110 - • Shakespeare Locked Dow...
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. 109 down 45 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.
Sonnet 109 full text:
O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself 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.
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This video has a musical finale! - • Shakespeare Locked Dow...
www.mandy.com/actor/profile/a...
Intro music composed & recorded by Joel Goodman.
/ @eppingmusicschool