Understand Shakespeare's language with this sonnet followed by a modern translation. Shakespeare's not the most graceful gift receiver, which leads to this awkward phone call.
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. 122 down 32 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 122 full text:
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity -
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold
To trust those tables that receive thee more.
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.
Be sure to subscribe here for more of William Shakespeare's sonnets: tiny.cc/fx6imz
Shakespeare AND laser-vision! - • Understand Shakespeare...
www.mandy.com/actor/profile/a...
Intro music composed & recorded by Joel Goodman.
/ @eppingmusicschool