“From fairest creatures we desire increase….”

Hello, friends! This is a bonus episode to give you a taste of my new Patreon campaign. Subscribers to the Patreon can contribute a few dollars to the running of the podcast in exchange for bonus content.

I’ll be recording Shakespeare’s sonnets, with analysis and discussion, and posting them exclusively to Patreon. In the meantime, my standard episodes will always remain free via your favourite podcast app. You can visit the Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/podshakespeare.

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William Shakespeare, Sonnet I

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That,  thereby,  beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Music clips:

Sergei Prokofiev, “Montagues and Capulets”, from Romeo and Juliet (ballet), 1935

Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Fantasia on Greensleeves“, from Sir John in Love, opera adapted from William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1928 (Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy)

Nino Rota, “Sarabande” from soundtrack to Zeffirelli’s “The Taming of the Shrew”, 1967 (Columbia Picutres, US / Italy)
orchestra conducted by Carlo Savina