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Sebastian Michael, author of The Sonneteer and several other plays and books, looks at each of William Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets in the originally published sequence, giving detailed explanations and looking out for what the words themselves tell us about the great poet and playwright, about the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady, and about their complex and fascinating relationships. Podcast transcripts, the sonnets, contact details and full info at https://www.sonnetcast.com
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This special episode summarises what we have learnt so far from the first 77 sonnets by William Shakespeare. It recaps the principal pointers that allow us to put together a profile of the young man they were written for or about and outlines the phases of his relationship with our poet, and it also dismantles some of the misconceptions that are so…
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The curiously didactic Sonnet 77 marks the halfway point of the collection of 154 sonnets contained in the 1609 Quarto Edition and it stands out for several reasons. What most immediately catches the eye is that it seems to be written into or so as to accompany a book of empty pages for its recipient to collect their thoughts and notes in a book of…
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The deceptively unsensational Sonnet 76 asks a simple question and provides to this a straightforward enough answer that will hardly come as a surprise: how is it that I write one sonnet after another and they all sound the same? Because "I always write of you." With this one declaration it settles a debate that – in view of its very existence baff…
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Sonnet 75 marks a moment of comparative calm in the turbulent relationship between William Shakespeare and his young lover. With its sober assessment of a continuously conflicted world of emotions that oscillate between abundant joy at being allowed to bask in the presence of the young man and utter dejection at missing him when he is absent, the s…
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Sonnet 74 continues the argument from Sonnet 73, and now reflects on what will happen when I, the poet, William Shakespeare, am dead. My body will be buried and return to earth, but my spirit will live on in this poetry that I write for you, the young man, which is why the loss you experience at my death will be insignificant: it only entails my pa…
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Sonnet 73 is the first in a second pair of poems to meditate on the poet's age and mortality and to reflect on the point of his very existence. But while Sonnets 71 & 72 focus on Shakespeare's reputation, which he perceives as poor and which he fears might also tarnish the young man were he to show his love and mourning for Shakespeare after his de…
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Sonnet 72 picks up on Sonnet 71 and explains why the supposedly 'wise' world would look down on the young man for having loved or for still loving Shakespeare after his death and why he should therefore forget him and allow the poet's name to pass into oblivion, along with his decomposing body in the grave. The sonnet reinforces and intensifies the…
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Sonnet 71 is the first in a pair of poems which purport to urge the young man to forget the author after his death so as to spare him – the young man – any embarrassment or indeed mockery that having loved or still caring for the then deceased poet might cause him. Both sonnets, but Sonnet 71 in particular, strike an ironic tone, which nevertheless…
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With Sonnet 70, William Shakespeare once more performs the poetic equivalent of a handbrake turn and swivels what we thought we could understand from Sonnet 69 around 180 degrees to race headlong in the opposite direction. The charge levied against his young lover – that with his conduct he has been allowing himself to become 'common' and thus acqu…
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Taken on its own, Sonnet 69 presents a devastating indictment of William Shakespeare's young lover. Its uncompromising juxtaposition of the young man's universally acknowledged beauty against his reputedly flawed character would be enough to put into question whether Shakespeare can still feel at all devoted to him: by itself, the poem is nothing s…
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Sonnet 68 continues the argument from Sonnet 67 and shifts the focus of Shakespeare's opprobrium from the fashion for heavy make-up to that for wearing wigs, a practice by him equally abhorred. Unlike Sonnet 67, Sonnet 68 seems to be virtually devoid of any puns or double meanings that would resonate with us, and so although these two sonnets come …
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Sonnet 67 picks up on the deeply dissatisfied mood of Sonnet 66 and develops the theme of a world that has lost its way right through Sonnet 68. On the surface, Sonnets 67 & 68 concern themselves entirely with the then new fashion – much scorned by Shakespeare – for heavy make-up and big wigs and their wearers' futile endeavours to endow themselves…
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Sonnet 66 to all intents and purposes is a rant. In it, William Shakespeare uses his opening line to tell us that he is about to name just some of the things that make him want to throw in the towel and die. He then lists eleven of these ills in the world and reserves the closing couplet to reiterate that he's really over it and would gladly turn h…
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Sonnet 65 brings to a close – at least for the moment – this reflection on the passing of time that started with Sonnet 60 and focused quite heavily – certainly in parts – on William Shakespeare's preoccupation with his own age and mortality. The sonnet effectively provides a summing up of the arguments laid out over the previous four or five poems…
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​With his moving, melancholy Sonnet 64, William Shakespeare continues an ongoing meditation on time, but unlike other sonnets that have gone before or that are soon to come, he here finds no redemption in his own writing or hope in the prospect of being able to lend his lover longevity beyond his presence on the planet through poetry. The sonnet th…
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In Sonnet 63, William Shakespeare continues his reflection on his own age and now projects this as a dreaded and near-inescapable reality that will one day be visited upon his young lover; but like several sonnets that have come in the collection before, Sonnet 63 both endeavours and promises to render the young lover immune to death, age, and deca…
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With his most unsparing sonnet so far, Sonnet 62, William Shakespeare finds yet another register and a new level of depth to both his insight into self and the honesty with which he is prepared to sonneteer his young lover. That his lover is young and he by his own perception and standards old could scarcely be more drastically emphasised than in t…
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With Sonnet 61, William Shakespeare returns to the theme treated in Sonnets 27 & 28 of an enforced separation from his lover that robs him of his sleep, but here brings into the equation the young man's hoped for but absent jealousy, to end on a sense that in fact betrays Shakespeare's own jealousy of the company the young man is keeping while away…
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In this special episode, Professor Sir Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson who severally and jointly have written and edited many books on Shakespeare, talk to Sebastian Michael about their edition All the Sonnets of Shakespeare and how the order of composition differs from the order in which they were first published in 1609, and also about where …
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For his quiet mediation on time in Sonnet 60, William Shakespeare once more borrows more or less directly from Ovid's Metamorphoses, a text we know he knew well and that influenced him greatly in the translation of his contemporary Arthur Golding. Its calm philosophical acceptance of mortality notwithstanding, it nevertheless infuses its reflective…
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Sonnet 59 takes us back into the realm of the proverb and the poetic commonplace and wonders how – if the old saying holds true that there is nothing new under the sun, but everything recurs in never ending cycles – a previous generation would have viewed and in poetry depicted the young man. Similar to Sonnet 53, it for the most part appears to pr…
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Sonnet 58 continues from Sonnet 57 and elaborates on Shakespeare's startling sense of subservience to the young man. It simply picks up from the sentiment that "being your slave" I have to wait on and for you and affirms that in this lowly position I cannot presume to have any powers over your conduct or your whereabouts, and in fact I must not eve…
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Sonnets 57 & 58 once again come as a strongly linked pair, and with these sonnets , William Shakespeare positions himself at such a pointedly subservient angle to his lover that we may be forgiven for detecting in them a really rather rare and therefore all the more startling note of sarcasm. The argument that is being pursued is simple enough: I a…
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Sonnet 56 is the second sonnet in the series so far in which William Shakespeare addresses not the young man, nor us as the general reader or listener about the young man, but an abstract concept, in this case love. The first instance when Shakespeare did something similar was Sonnet 19, which addressed itself to time. Here as then, this changes ou…
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With the supremely confident Sonnet 55, William Shakespeare returns to a theme he has handled similarly deftly before: the power of poetry itself to make the young man live forever. In a departure from previous instances, he here appears to borrow directly from Horace and Ovid, who are both Roman poets of the turn into the first millennium of the C…
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After the turmoil of Sonnets 33 to 42 and the prolonged period of separation signalled by Sonnets 43 to 51, which in turn was followed by a joyous, sensual and tender reunion with Sonnets 52 and 53, Sonnet 54 assumes a more aloof, marginally moralistic tone which nevertheless manages to connect with, and in fact reference, sonnets that appeared muc…
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The tender and complex Sonnet 53 – just over a third into the series – finds yet another entirely new register and conjures up not only an image of a beautiful person being admired but also a sense of great intimacy that comes delicately paired with that feeling of wonder at something almost alien that may just be too good to be true.…
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The astonishingly suggestive Sonnet 52 is the closest William Shakespeare has come so far to answering in his own words the question that has agitated readers of these sonnets for centuries: is this a physical, even sexual, relationship he is having with the young man, or could it not simply be one that is very close, maybe romantic, but neverthele…
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Sonnet 51 picks up from the dull-paced journey of Sonnet 50 and contrasts this with the poet's boundless desire for speed once he is on the way back home to his lover. It also marks the end of the extended period of separation that began with Sonnet 43 and so concludes this sequence of nine sonnets that appear to have been written while Shakespeare…
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Sonnets 50 & 51 once again come as a pair, whereby Sonnet 50 evokes in a measured tone of melancholy the sorrow and sadness Shakespeare senses on a strenuous journey at slowly having to move further and further away from his lover, while Sonnet 51 then contrasts this with a notion of just how eager he will be on his way back to him and how fast he …
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The soberly solemn Sonnet 49 opens an unnervingly real register that does away with hyperbolic praise, clever contrivance, or poetic acrobatics, and instead drives through a short structured sequence of dreaded but perfectly plausible scenarios towards a devastating denouement. Seldom until now and rarely hereafter do we hear Shakespeare quite so r…
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Sonnet 47 again follows on directly from Sonnet 46, developing the argument further and arriving at a conclusion which is also maybe not altogether surprising, but which validates the premise set out with Sonnet 46 much more than that on its own led us to expect, thus tying Sonnet 46 tightly into this couple as a unit.…
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Sonnet 46 is the first in a second couple of sonnets that take a more abstract approach to dealing with separation, while employing a fairly established classical trope, in this case a conflict between the eye and the heart over which of these two should 'own' the young lover. Similar to Sonnet 44 in the previous pair, Sonnet 46 can ostensibly stan…
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Sonnet 45 follows on directly from Sonnet 44 as a seamless continuation and therefore needs to be read in tandem with it for it to make sense. With Sonnet 44 having introduced the two classical elements earth and water and explained how it is their heavy materiality that prevents William Shakespeare from being with his young lover, Sonnet 45 now sp…
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Sonnet 44 is the first in two pairs of poems that together sit in a larger group of sonnets which see William Shakespeare spending time away from his young lover and expressing his anguish over this absence. It comes in an unequal coupling with Sonnet 45, whereby 44 can easily stand on its own, but 45 directly follows on from 44 and only makes sens…
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Sonnet 43 leaves behind, for the time-being, the upheaval and upset caused by the young man's betrayal of Shakespeare with his own mistress and picks up the theme – and to a lesser extent mood – of Sonnets 27 & 28 when Shakespeare – away from his young lover and tired with travel – is kept awake by the beautiful young man's vision appearing to him …
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In this special episode, Stephen Regan, Professor Emeritus at Durham University, who is currently a research associate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne and the author of The Sonnet (Oxford University Press, 2019), talks to Sebastian Michael about the sonnet as a poetic form: its origins, how it reaches the E…
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In the second of two sonnets that try to deal with the fallout from the young man's infidelity, William Shakespeare contorts himself into an argument that, really, both his young lover and his mistress did what they did only for the love they both bear him. That this is something of a delusion is a conclusion he himself comes to as easily as we do.…
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Sonnet 41 is the first of two sonnets in which William Shakespeare tries to make sense of the young man's transgression and to absolve him of any guilt. Like its companion Sonnet 42, it can be read independently and does not form an actual pair, and like Sonnet 42 it doesn't really succeed at what it sets out to do, because by the end of it, it is …
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With his forcefully forgiving Sonnet 40, William Shakespeare finally connects us right back to Sonnet 35 and sets out on a short sequence which explains with startling frankness what has happened and what should now, and, more to the point, should not now be the consequence of this. That Shakespeare feels desolate about his lover's 'ill deeds' is b…
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Sonnet 39 is the last of four sonnets that seem to disrupt the sequence of events until Sonnet 35, and picks up more or less directly with Sonnet 36 by suggesting that it would be best if William Shakespeare were separate from the young man, though for wholly different reasons. The sonnet appears to post-rationalise an imposed absence of, or from, …
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With his remarkably deadpan Sonnet 38, William Shakespeare changes tone completely and positions his own poetry as the product of the man who has so long now been his Muse. Like Sonnet 37, it does not obviously fit into the sequence, but like Sonnet 37, it still clearly speaks to the same young man and also like Sonnet 37, it references topics that…
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In the first of three sonnets that appear to disrupt the sequence that concerns itself with the young man's evident infidelity, Sonnet 37 revisits the themes previously encountered of the poet's keenly felt lack of luck, absence of esteem, and sorely missing success, and contrasts this with the young man's abundant riches, both material and metapho…
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With the curious Sonnet 36 William Shakespeare appears to be either inverting the guilt and shame that the previous three sonnets have laid upon the young man for his evident transgression and projecting it directly on himself, or to be uncovering a new source of scandal that gives him reason to suggest – borderline disingenuously, it might seem – …
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With his tormented, paradoxical, and sensationally revealing Sonnet 35, William Shakespeare absolves the young man of his misdeed and puts what has happened down to nothing in the world being perfect, not even he. It is the third in this set of three sonnets that might be considered a triptych, and with it, Shakespeare appears to resign himself int…
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The devastated and devastatingly powerful Sonnet 34 picks up from where Sonnet 33 wanted to not only leave off but let go, and like a second wave of pain and mourning asks the young man directly why he has allowed the gorgeous sunshine of this relationship to be cast over with appalling weather. And unlike Sonnet 33, it not only tries, but apparent…
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With Sonnet 33 a new phase begins in the relationship between William Shakespeare and the young man. The storm clouds that gather in this poem are a direct and intentional metaphor for the turbulence the two face, as the young man has clearly gone and done something to upset his loving poet. What exactly this is, the sonnet doesn't tell us, but it …
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The wryly ironic Sonnet 32 marks a caesura in the canon, as it sits right between a development arc in the relationship that spans the sequence uninterrupted from Sonnet 18 to Sonnet 31, while giving nothing away of the entirely new phase the relationship enters with the storm clouds that gather in Sonnet 33. In tone, in attitude, in self-evaluatio…
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With the astonishingly bold, borderline brazen, Sonnet 31, William Shakespeare strikes a completely new tone and tells both his young lover and us things he has not revealed before. It comes as close as we have seen thus far to declaring a physical component to their relationship, and in doing so opens an entirely new chapter with a whole different…
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