SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

One of the most famous sonnets in the canon, Sonnet 18 bursts onto the scene with an energy, confidence, and message all of its own, setting the tone for a whole new kind of relationship and putting the poetry itself centre stage. It is one of the easiest to understand – which may in parts account for its immense popularity – and it is utterly delightful in its unabashed affirmation of life.

The Procreation Sonnets are something of a conundrum: they are entirely clear in their intention, in their message, and in their poetic purpose, they stand at the beginning of the originally published sequence, and yet at first glance they seem to fit nowhere properly. And more than anything else – and more than many if not most of the other sonnets that we have of William Shakespeare’s – they rai...

The intricate, self-aware, and in places truly tender Sonnet 17 is the last one to advise the young man to produce some offspring, which makes it the last of the Procreation Sonnets, and it segues smoothly into entirely different and really new territory where William Shakespeare as the poet begins to take centre stage right next to the man he has been writing these sonnets for.

The riveting and really rather irony-infused Sonnet 16 directly follows on from Sonnet 15 and completes the argument set up and semi-resolved there. And while Sonnet 15 can just about stand on its own – with, as we have seen, quite thrilling significance for how it then can be read – Sonnet 16 absolutely needs to be read with Sonnet 15 for it to make sense.

With the somewhat suggestive, slightly cheeky, and categorically confident Sonnet 15, William Shakespeare taps into a whole different register that positions him as the poet in a whole new relationship towards the young man he is writing to, and with astonishing effect.

The at first glance curiously anticlimactic Sonnet 14 seems to take us a step back in any real or supposed trajectory that the sonnets so far have described, but it nevertheless offers an intriguing insight into the constellation between the poet and the young man, and may in fact hide more than meets the eye.

The personal, pleading, and particularly revealing Sonnet 13 marks an especially noteworthy change in tone, and it provides one specific detail that narrows the field of candidates for the young man dramatically in one fell swoop.

In the gorgeous, pensive, and mature Sonnet 12, William Shakespeare finds a whole new register to relate a message that is by now familiar, and he reveals something of the depth and melancholy that will become a feature of future poems in the series.

The refreshingly blunt and remarkably utilitarian Sonnet 11 makes a now well established old argument with a couple of surprising new twists and confirms, or at least supports, a couple of observations about Shakespeare's day and about the young man that we made before.

The spectacular Sonnet 10 boldly goes where no sonnet in the series so far has gone before and radically changes the tone and the dynamic between the poet and the young man.

The multi-layered and marvellously complex Sonnet 9 sets out with an unlikely supposition to make some strongly suggestive statements about the young man and his conduct, and introduces a whole new, massive, and massively important concept to these poems.

The quite contradictory because poetically plausible but seemingly lightweight Sonnet 8 makes yet another, maybe somewhat more laboured, attempt at coming up with a metaphor to move the young man to making a child: music. But it does offer up a significant new revelation...

In the fascinating Sonnet 7 William Shakespeare draws on a classical image to try and convince the young man that he needs to produce a son: the sun travelling in its chariot through the sky, and although the metaphor may have its flaws it still tells us yet more about the poet, his education, and his cultural context.

Sonnet 6 seamlessly follows Sonnet 5 – together with which it forms the first closely tied pair in the series – and continues the argument set up there: the poet compares the young man to a flower which, as winter approaches, can only maintain its beauty in a distilled form, and encourages him to metaphorically distil himself by depositing his essence in a woman and thus producing a child, so it c...

Sonnet 5 together with Sonnet 6 forms the first pair in the series. It tells the young man that time will take away his good looks before long, but that the beauty of summer can be preserved by turning its flowers into lovely fragrances, thus sets out to compel the young man to metaphorically distil his essence by producing a child...

In the intriguing Sonnet 4, William Shakespeare makes what sounds like a fairly abstract case for the young man to now produce an heir. But could it be that this in itself tells us something about the young man and about the culture he and Shakespeare live and operate in on the one hand and also about the reasons Shakespeare may have for actually writing these first few sonnets that form the Procr...

In the particularly exciting third Sonnet, William Shakespeare counsels the young man to recognise it is time now to have a son so that when he reaches the age his mother is at today, he will be able to remind himself of his youth by looking at him, just as she does when she sees herself reflected in him. What makes this sonnet so interesting is that we learn something very specific and exceptiona...

In the second Sonnet of the Procreation Sequence, the poet continues his mission of trying to convince a young man of the need to have children, by painting a picture of him in his old age when only a son could carry on his beauty in the world...

In the first Sonnet of the generally accepted and originally published series, William Shakespeare tells a young man of unnamed identity that he is wasting his beauty on himself and depriving the world of its due by not having children, and asks him to change his ways. This is also the first of the Fair Youth Sonnets and thus the first of the Procreation Sonnets and so it sets the tone for the ope...

The Introduction to SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived. Sebastian Michael gives a brief account of how he fell in love with Shakespeare's Sonnets and what prompted him to first write a play about them, then record them all on YouTube and create a Video Blog about them and why he is now starting this podcast.  Info, background, transcripts, and all the sonnets wit...