Episodes

  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 75
    Sep 29 2024

    I don't know who gave Shakespeare relationship advice because this sonnet is all over the place! Someone help him!


    Our story continues with Shakespeare aboard a pirate ship.


    Sonnet 75

    So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
    Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
    And for the peace of you I hold such strife
    As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
    Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
    Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
    Now counting best to be with you alone,
    Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:
    Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
    And by and by clean starved for a look;
    Possessing or pursuing no delight
    Save what is had, or must from you be took.
    Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
    Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

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    20 mins
  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 74
    Sep 22 2024

    Shakespeare tells his lover not worry when he dies because he will always have his poetry to remember him by.


    Our story continues with Shakespeare getting into another dilemma on his way back to England.


    Sonnet 74

    But be contented when that fell arrest
    Without all bail shall carry me away,
    My life hath in this line some interest,
    Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
    When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
    The very part was consecrate to thee:
    The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
    My spirit is thine, the better part of me:
    So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
    The prey of worms, my body being dead;
    The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
    Too base of thee to be remembered.
    The worth of that is that which it contains,
    And that is this, and this with thee remains.

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    19 mins
  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 73
    Sep 15 2024

    Shakespeare continues harping on about getting old and how his young lover needs to forget him.


    Sonnet 73

    That time of year thou mayst in me behold
    When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
    Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
    Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
    In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
    As after sunset fadeth in the west;
    Which by and by black night doth take away,
    Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
    In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
    That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
    As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
    Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
    This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.


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    19 mins
  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 72
    Sep 8 2024

    Shakespeare tried to catch me out again by making Sonnet 71 a two parter. But I was ahead of the game for once...


    Our story continues with a very ill Shakespeare.


    Sonnet 72

    O! lest the world should task you to recite
    What merit lived in me, that you should love
    After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
    For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
    Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
    To do more for me than mine own desert,
    And hang more praise upon deceased I
    Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
    O! lest your true love may seem false in this
    That you for love speak well of me untrue,
    My name be buried where my body is,
    And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
    For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
    And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

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    20 mins
  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 71
    Sep 1 2024

    Shakespeare tells his lover to stop caring about him when he's dead. Easier said than done to be honest.


    Sonnet 71

    No longer mourn for me when I am dead
    Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
    Give warning to the world that I am fled
    From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
    Nay, if you read this line, remember not
    The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
    That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
    If thinking on me then should make you woe.
    O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
    When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
    Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
    But let your love even with my life decay;
    Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
    And mock you with me after I am gone.

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    20 mins
  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 70
    Aug 25 2024

    I'm back after a week off! Shakespeare is back! Sonnet 70 is all about how people are jealous of you when you are hot - we all know that feeling eh?


    Sonnet 70

    That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
    For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
    The ornament of beauty is suspect,
    A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
    So thou be good, slander doth but approve
    Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;
    For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
    And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
    Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days
    Either not assailed, or victor being charged;
    Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
    To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,
    If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,
    Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.




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    19 mins
  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 69
    Aug 11 2024

    Shakespeare talks about how someone can be sexy on the outside but be rotten on the inside.


    Sonnet 69

    Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
    Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
    All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,
    Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
    Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;
    But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own,
    In other accents do this praise confound
    By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
    They look into the beauty of thy mind,
    And that in guess they measure by thy deeds;
    Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,
    To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:
    But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
    The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.

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    19 mins
  • Shakespeare's Sonnet 68
    Aug 4 2024

    Looks like this is part 3 of Sonnet 66. Shakespeare chats about how bad cosmetics are and wants to return to the days of natural beauty.


    Sonnet 68

    Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
    When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
    Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
    Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
    Before the golden tresses of the dead,
    The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
    To live a second life on second head;
    Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
    In him those holy antique hours are seen,
    Without all ornament, itself and true,
    Making no summer of another's green,
    Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
    And him as for a map doth Nature store,
    To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

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    20 mins