After Words

Even if he had never written a single play, Shakespeare would have a lasting reputation as a poet. We need look no further than his sonnets, first published in a collected volume in 1609, to have evidence of the playwright’s brilliance as a poet. With all the eloquence of his language on display, the sonnets engage with the subjects of love, time, beauty and mortality.

Formally, the sonnet can be exacting.  But Shakespeare’s sonnets would seem to make slight of formal difficulty, as the collected volume comes to a total of 154 poems. To get a sense of Shakespeare’s achievement with these many sonnets, I would invite the reader to compose a sonnet - just one - of their own. 

II.

A recitation of Sonnet 54. <1> 

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give:
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses;
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so:
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made. <2>
__________ 
<1>Princess Grace of Monaco. Birds, Beasts & Flowers: A Programme of Poetry, Prose & Music (1980). CD. Nimbus Records, 1992.
<2>Missing from the recording, the final couplet:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, my verse distills your truth.