Understand Shakespeare's language with this sonnet followed by a modern translation. Understanding Shakespeare is all well & good, but if you want to know how I made that chocolate cake, you'll have to pause the black card at the end.
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. 118 down 36 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 119 - • Sonnet 119 - Understan...
Sonnet 120 - • Understand Shakespeare...
Sonnet 118 full text:
Like as to make our appetites more keen
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As to prevent our maladies unseen
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge:
Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, t'anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,
And brought to medicine a healthful state,
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured.
But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
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Missed Sonnet 109? Here it is - • Understand Shakespeare...
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Intro music composed & recorded by Joel Goodman.
/ @eppingmusicschool