"Sonnet 18 - Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?" by William Shakespeare (poetry reading)

This poem is now taken to be a love poem addressed by a man to a young woman - and not a poem written by a client to please his boss which originally it probably was.

Who am I to argue? In fact, I'm seriously misjudging my market, because here it's recited by Peter O'Toole to a young lady while she is taking a bath.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHwI-ra05pM

So here is a sexier version. Now then, if there are any young ladies out there who would like a personal performance whilst taking a bath...er, perhaps not, you'd better just listen to this - or Peter O'Toole. It's a nice fantasy but not worth me risking an orchidectomy.

The first picture of Suzanna Bathing was by Francesco Hayez (1850)
The second was by Jean-Baptiste Santerre (1704)
The picture of Shakespeare is called the Cobbe Portrait, claimed to have been painted while he was alive in about 1610.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Sonnet
• 18
• Shall
• Compare
• Thee
• to
• Summer's
• Day?
• William
• Shakespeare
• poetry

[ShadesOfWillow]

So beautiful, so favored....

[aceofspades02]

Thou hast a great voice and diction! Well done and thanks for sharing!

Ace

[veneragh]

Love it, thanks!

[kendraxiong]

You have a great narrating voice! :)

[glowghosty]

@29harveydinio Michael Wood in his biography of Shakespeare pg 183-185 asserts that the language of the poems, incorporating themes of love and death suggest that the 'Young Man' in question was his 9 year old son Hamnet who died in 1596, and not some romantic overature to a courtly lord in tights. I just thought I'd add this, to counter the multi-cultural perspective we were all force fed in college.

[jarvik2000]

Excellent poetry. I love Shakespeare.

[FloresDeLaPrimavera]

What ever it is meant to, it is beautiful and a lovely reading indeed..

[ladycosmod]

Love it. 

[selmoonneamt]

cool

[scifiwritir]

When I used to teach I always taught this at the same time I taught My Mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. Thanks, Spoken.