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

In Sonnet 136, William Shakespeare part develops, part reiterates the 'argument', such as it is, of Sonnet 135, that in amongst an abundance of men whom he suggests his mistress is having sex with, he should at least be one, and that she should think of him as her possibly principal lover, mostly on account of his name, Will, which here as in the previous sonnet is treated as synonymous with 'desire', 'the intention to have that desire met', 'the male sexual organ with which this is accomplished', and 'the name of the man or men to whom said sexual organ belongs', as well as the future tense when some or any of this is likely to happen. The only sense of 'will' present in the previous sonnet that does not come into play here is the female sexual organ, but that does not make this sonnet any less salacious, because for this, Shakespeare here finds another commonly used euphemism at the time, which he latches onto and puns on for a couple of lines instead...

With Sonnet 135 William Shakespeare embarks on an exercise in making as much use of – and mischief with – his own name as poetic acrobatics will allow. He doesn't entirely avoid, one might argue, falling off the flying trapeze of rhetorical invention and into the safety net of his overall benign, endearing nature, by occasionally misjudging the fine balance there is to be kept between 'bawdy' and 'lewd', though that in itself is obviously a matter of taste. The near compulsive punning on 'Will' with six different meanings continues into and throughout Sonnet 136 and will later be picked up again briefly, which does pose the question whether he attaches more significance to the name he shares with many men of his era than simply some self-conscious sexual innuendo...

Sonnet 134 continues the argument from Sonnet 133 and now refines the plea made by that sonnet for the young lover to be freed from the mistress's shackles and develops it effectively into a proposed bargain: since he has put his name on the same bond that ties me to you as a guarantor only, I will forfeit myself to you if you release him back to me.This, the poet immediately realises, is not, however, going to get him anywhere, because the mistress, already in possession of both, will exercise her full title in both and have them both, and so although, as the sonnet also suggest, the young man was only ever brought into her orbit on Shakespeare's behalf, he too is now lost to the mistress and pays Shakespeare's debt to her, without this being enough though to release either of them from being held captive by and thus enthralled to her.

In his astonishingly frank Sonnet 133 William Shakespeare attempts to come to terms with the fact that his young lover is also having an affair with his mistress. The sonnet in one fell swoop answers two principal questions: first, what 'black deeds' of his Dark Lady's he may be referring to in the closing couplet of Sonnet 131, and second, who the woman might be that appears in the crisis which besets his relationship with the young man between Sonnets 33 and 42. And while there is of course no external, cast-iron proof that these sonnets do constellate to form a coherent picture, Sonnet 133 is in fact only the first of several sonnets to strongly suggest they do. What it leaves no doubt about, and what subsequent sonnets will make even more explicitly clear, is that William Shakespeare is for the second time in the collection talking about a relationship that has turned triangular.

With Sonnet 132, William Shakespeare suspends the charge brought against his mistress at the end of the previous sonnet that she is 'black' in nothing so much as in her deeds, and instead pleads with her to have pity on him as he suffers under her disdain for him. At first glance and in isolation it might seem, then, that such 'black' deeds as were mentioned in the closing couplet of Sonnet 131 are nothing but this attitude of hers towards him, but as we saw then and also discuss here, this is unlikely to be the case since a 'ladylike' level of decorum requires a woman at the time to be quite unapproachable and at least apparently aloof, and Sonnet 133 will confirm in no uncertain terms that the deeds in question are of a different nature altogether.The sonnet thus stands in a long tradition of poetry that has a male lover pine for his unattainable and/or contemptuous mistress, and while on the surface it appears to express itself in positively chaste tones – certainly when compared to the exceptionally explicit Sonnet 129 – it still carries some subtle but nonetheless perfectly evident sexual undertones which it combines, so we get the impression, with just a tinge of irony. 

Sonnet 131 connects directly to Sonnet 130 and now invokes a further poetic trope, that of the tyrannous mistress who makes her admirer to groan for love, even though this woman is – as Sonnet 130 made clear – categorically different to those other beauties traditionally so characterised and, as this poem also is fairly quick to point out, her beauty is not universally considered to have the capacity to make a man thus suffer an aching desire for her.​Shakespeare then once again plays on his awareness of this circumstance and again acknowledges, indeed asserts, that as far as he is concerned she fully has that power so ascribed to other ladies with their light-skinned, fair-haired beauty, and that her darker skin and black hair to him constitute the most beautiful thing there is, only to then in the closing couplet ambush her with a surprising twist: it is not, he startlingly declares, your outward appearance that is black, as in 'ugly,' it is your deeds that make you so, and that, as far as I can tell, is where you get your bad reputation from.

With Sonnet 130, William Shakespeare, from the first, famous and oft-quoted line onwards, strikes a note possibly of defiance, possibly of satire, possibly both, subverting the traditional idolisation of a lover's object of desire through poetry and putting down a second powerful marker in quick succession that his mistress is different to other mistresses eulogised in sonnet form of then current fashion, not only but particularly because with her tan skin and black hair she doesn't fit the standard ideal of beauty of his day. In a tone that to us – and out context – sounds startlingly disparaging, he de-deifies and in doing so humanises her, and he once again asserts that both false beauty and false praise of beauty are not his style.

Sonnet 129 is the most explicitly sexual, and therefore sexually explicit, poem in the collection so far, and it is the first to betray a deep unease on William Shakespeare's part with his own desire for his mistress. The language he employs to characterise the sexual act with her oscillates from ecstasy of expectation to post-coital depression, even disgust, with a vocabulary in-between that is reminiscent more of a war zone than of a romantic roll in the hay.

With Sonnet 128, William Shakespeare employs the well-worn poetic trope of a lover who envies the musical instrument being played by his mistress its proximity to her and the delight of her touch. He either imagines or recalls watching her play a harpsichord or similar keyboard and wishes he could trade places with the keys that seem to be kissing her fingertips. But this not being possible, or – as he actually puts it – the keys enjoying themselves as much as they do, he suggests that she continue to allow the keys to kiss her fingers, while he should be allowed to kiss her lips.

Sonnet 127 is the first of 26 poems in the 1609 collection which together are generally known as the Dark Lady Sonnets. While William Shakespeare himself never uses the expression 'Dark Lady' any more than he uses the term 'Fair Youth' in these sonnets, it is entirely clear from this sonnet onwards that this much shorter section concerns itself with a woman who has dark hair, dark eyes, and a complexion that is most likely tan or olive, as opposed to pale.The sonnet sets a tone that is ambiguous, somewhat distanced, perhaps slightly ironic, perhaps also quite sincere, but neither of these in an obvious, let alone straightforward way, and it establishes from the outset that the person our poet is now talking about is his 'mistress', and that she does not fit the hitherto or until recently accepted ideal of beauty. In fact, she represents, so the sonnet tells us, the exact opposite of what used to be considered beautiful, but although Shakespeare does not exactly sound overjoyed at her kind of beauty being recognised, he still values this genuine, natural beauty above the cosmetic artifice that apparently has now become the fashion.

In this special episode, Sebastian Michael looks at the first 126 Sonnets in the 1609 collection and examines the principal questions they present: - Is there a Fair Youth at all?- If so, is this the same young man throughout, or could it be that the first 17 poems, the Procreation Sonnets, are addressed to someone else?- And if there is a Fair Youth, who is it?While there will most likely never be answers that can be offered with cast-iron certainty, a detailed analysis of the textual and external evidence we have does yield significant pointers and offers an idea as to where, on a scale of plausibility, we may locate them.

Sonnet 126 is the last poem in which William Shakespeare addresses his younger lover and so marks the end of the Fair Youth series in the collection first published in 1609. The sonnet stands out for its tenderness and the gentle tone with which it reminds the young man that even he – beautiful as he is and ever youthful as he may seem – must ultimately be surrendered by nature to all-consuming time, and for the quiet resignation with which it accepts this as the universal and inescapable truth that is all our fate.Beyond that, the poem is also formally exceptional: consisting as it does of six rhyming couplets, it isn't strictly speaking a sonnet at all, though either Shakespeare himself or somebody else has furnished it with two sets of empty brackets where a sonnet's closing couplet would normally be. And so Sonnet 126 is genuinely unique: there is none other in Shakespeare's canon like it.

Sonnet 125 is the last in this group of three which effectively concludes the series of sonnets that concern themselves with William Shakespeare's love for his young man. Sonnet 126 also speaks to the Fair Youth directly, but it forms almost a coda, an epilogue so to speak, to the body of poems addressing their relationship. Here, in Sonnet 125, Shakespeare once more acknowledges that what he has to offer is not status, nobility, riches, or power, but an honest love that comes from the heart: an admiration, respect, and liking for the young nobleman that is not borne out of duty or a desire to manoeuvre himself into a favoured position, but out of a genuine affection, which he senses, and expresses, he receives in return. 

Having denied time the power to make his love change in the previous poem, William Shakespeare now with Sonnet 124 turns his attention to politics, statehood, and the fashions of a notoriously fickle society, and further delineates his love for his young man against such other, more trivial, more volatile, much more feeble affections as it may be surrounded by and as it may be finding itself compared to or accused of being. When Sonnet 123 addressed time itself directly, this sonnet speaks to no-one in particular but makes a general, and even bolder, assertion that his love is unmatched by any other; that it, in itself, is a kingdom, one might say, which does not rise and fall with fortune or the ever-fluid vagaries of opinion and manipulated opportunity but stands strong and singularly tall. 

Sonnet 123 is the first in a final group of three sonnets that speak the penultimate words on William Shakespeare's relationship with his young man. The last word isn't truly spoken at all, it sits silent in a pair of empty brackets where normally the closing couplet of Sonnet 126 would be, but before he addresses his lover there directly, as 'my lovely boy', and warns him of the all-consuming force of time once more, Shakespeare with this sonnet speaks to Time itself and declares his resolute defiance, by and through love.

With his curiously themed Sonnet 122, William Shakespeare tells his younger lover that although he has parted with a notebook he had received as a gift from him, its contents are in fact kept entirely in his memory, where they will remain safely stored and complete until the day he dies. This, he assures him, is a better way of holding on to them than relying on any external object or item, since doing so would only foster forgetfulness in Shakespeare and therefore weaken the young man's presence in his heart.

With Sonnet 121, William Shakespeare claims his right to be who he is and negates the authority of others to pass judgement on him and his actions, specifically those who themselves are not morally or ethically superior to him but who would appear to project their own corrupted values and jaded view of the human being onto those around them. In doing so, he stakes out a territory of moral autonomy for himself where he alone may determine whether his actions are in fact reprehensible or whether they are simply thought to be so by others, when to him they are the source of rightful delight and pleasure.

With Sonnet 120 William Shakespeare draws a line under the explanations and excuses offered throughout the previous three sonnets for his own infidelities in relation to his young man, and simply reminds himself now of how awful he felt when his lover treated him in a similar way on those occasions when it was him who was sleeping around with other people. The conclusion Shakespeare comes to is that they both in turn have been through hell, and that their respective debt to each other for each other's transgressions now must surely cancel itself out. 

With Sonnet 119, William Shakespeare further elaborates on his metaphor, introduced in Sonnet 118, of having taken bitter medicines to prevent himself from ever getting sick of his younger lover, these potions having been affairs, encounters, or even relationships of sorts with other people.Who these other people were he still doesn't tell us, but he here makes it even clearer that they were fundamentally bad for him, their principal, if not sole, redeeming feature being that their experience has ultimately strengthened him and cemented his love for his young man.​The sonnet is the third of three sonnets which all attempt to explain and to some extent excuse Shakespeare's infidelities of the past, and they all do so in the wake, directly, of Sonnet 116 which famously and categorically posited, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds | Admit impediments."

Sonnet 118 continues William Shakespeare's defence or explanation of his infidelities towards his younger lover with an argument that may well strike us as similarly spurious as the one deployed in Sonnet 117, even though unlike the previous poem, this one possesses an internal logic that allows him to come to a conclusion which does make some sense: so as not to get sick and tired of you, I have been tasting some bitter 'appetisers', as we might call them today, even going as far as purging myself with medicinal concoctions to ward off any such 'illness', but what I found in fact was that these 'treatments' themselves turned out to be harmful to my health and wellbeing.

Sonnet 117 is the first of three distinct but related sonnets that all seek to excuse, or at the very least explain, Shakespeare's own infidelities and inconstancies, first confessed to his lover in Sonnet 109 and, most directly, in Sonnet 110. Here, our poet lists a whole raft of failings on his part in his conduct towards his young man, and positively invites him to level accusations to their end against him, only to then, with the closing couplet, claim that although such charges be justified in so much as all of this may well have been the case, he has with his actions merely been putting his lover's own fidelity and character to the test.

With his celebrated and oft-recited Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare offers not so much a definition as a characterisation of what true love is: unshakeable and unaffected by external changes or temptations, steady and dependable as a lodestar in the darkest, stormiest hour, and everlasting "even to the edge of doom."  With its religious overtones that echo the Christian marriage vows and invoke absolute certainties in a world that is inherently uncertain, it speaks to generations of lovers in a language that is direct and easy to understand. It is hardly surprising, then, that together with Sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, and perhaps the nearly as famous Sonnet 29, When in Disgrace With Fortune and Men's Eyes, Sonnet 116 occupies the top spot of Shakespeare's Sonnets 'Greatest Hits', and it is also one of the most confident statements made by Shakespeare about, as much as in, his craft, poetry.

With Sonnet 115 William Shakespeare turns his attention to the perplexing paradox that a love that is experienced as complete and absolute and therefore perfect, such as his love for his young man, may turn out, over time, to have been but a fledgling infant compared to the even fuller, more profound, more mature love that it has the potential to grow into. In acknowledging that love can evolve and grow over time it sets the premise that love itself is changeable – here for the better, to be more deeply and more sincerely felt than ever before – and it therefore not only concedes, but claims as a lover's right, the necessity, perhaps, to revise statements made about love in the past, and in doing so to effectively give those pronouncements the lie.

With his curiously cryptic Sonnet 114, William Shakespeare poses a rhetorical question to his younger lover, asking whether his experience of seeing him in everything he looks at is down simply to his eye flattering him, or to his eye having acquired the ancient mystical art of alchemy and actually turning even ugly creatures into beautiful angelic beings just such as the young man himself. He then also settles the matter emphatically and declares without reservation that it is indeed flattery on the eye's part that has this effect on him, but that any sin the mind may be committing in lapping it all up is mitigated by the fact that the eye too loves what it wants to see – the young man's beauty – and so willingly tastes of this flattering, though therefore potentially poisonous, potion first, before passing it on for the mind to metaphorically imbibe.

With Sonnet 113, William Shakespeare returns once more to the theme of separation, reflecting on how, when he is away from his younger lover, everything he sees takes on his lover's shape and thus reminds him of him. Although we don't know when exactly the sonnet was written and therefore where precisely in the collection it belongs, it would appear to also, therefore, pick up on the notion, emphatically expressed in the previous sonnet, of his lover being his 'all the world', and it certainly also connects strongly to the sonnet that follows, which will further elaborate on the idea that the younger man with his beauty turns even the ugliest appearance to loveliness in Shakespeare's mind. 

With Sonnet 112, William Shakespeare picks up directly from Sonnet 111 in which he asked his younger lover to pity him, and he now goes one step further by telling him that it is his, the young man's, opinion – and his opinion only – that should ever matter to Shakespeare, because not only is the young man, as Sonnets 109 and 110 expressed, his "home of love" and "a god in love" to whom he considers himself "confined" and therefore fully committed, the young man is, so Shakespeare now asserts, his everything, his "all the world," and thus quite simply the only one who matters to him. Beyond that though, the sonnet also may well be telling us a great deal about the young lover's position towards Shakespeare and therefore about the status and character of their relationship at this advanced point in the proceedings, as we shall see...

With Sonnet 111, William Shakespeare shifts focus from his infidelities in relation to his younger lover, addressed in the previous two sonnets, to a general deficiency in his reputation, which he blames squarely on the fact that his circumstances require him to earn a living in the public sphere. This, he claims, has led him to acquire the conduct of a  person who attracts opprobrium, and while proposing to subject himself to whatever 'medicine' or 'penance' may be required of him, he sees and seeks his remedy first and foremost in the younger man's pity. This, he assures him, will suffice to cure him of any ills he may suffer resulting from any such misdeeds as come with the lifestyle his fortunes have imposed on him.

With his exceptionally candid and forthright Sonnet 110, William Shakespeare at once completes his apotheosis of his young lover, while at the same time confessing to him that yes, he too has had affairs with other people, but also reassuring him that these other lovers were no match for him and that they pale, compared to him, into insignificance, seeing that he is as "a god in love" to whom our poet feels and here declares himself to be inseparably tied.

Sonnet 109 is the first of two truly remarkable sonnets that speak of William Shakespeare's own infidelities towards his young lover during a period of prolonged absence. Although they do not form a strictly tied pair, together these two poems position our poet and his relationship in an entirely new light, because they for the first time genuinely acknowledge that he, too, like his young lover, has succumbed to temptation elsewhere while they were apart, but they both affirm him to be the only one who ever mattered and the one who truly matters now.

With Sonnet 108, William Shakespeare loops back into sentiments expressed intermittently since Sonnet 76, but particularly again recently in Sonnet 105: I have essentially said it all, there is nothing I can do other than repeat and reiterate and rephrase the praises I have sung and continue to sing for you. What it also picks up from Sonnet 105 is the religious tone this set with a there still fairly oblique reference to the Holy Trinity. This was already amplified, though subtly, in Sonnet 106, and here finds a whole new level of what may potentially be perceived as impudence, if looked on from a devoutly religious perspective. What it also does – and this may in some respects for our observation be most directly relevant – is to tell his young lover yet again that he is showing signs of age, but that to him, Shakespeare, this doesn't matter.

Of all the poems in the collection first published in 1609, Sonnet 107 most clearly and most compellingly seems to refer to external events that shape Shakespeare's world. Because of this, it takes up a pivotal position in the canon, since it may therein hold clues to both its date of composition and to the person it is addressed to. And while there is little doubt in most people's mind that its references are indeed intentional and allude to some momentous occasion that has passed off signally better than anyone at the time would have predicted, and that in the ensuing calm and peace our poet feels that his love and his poetry have been given a new lease of life, no-one can tell with absolute certainty just what Shakespeare is actually referring to or whom he is talking to, or even whether the two factors are directly or only indirectly linked, or not at all. There are, however, significant clues, and so much of our discussion of this sonnet will concern itself with what these are and what they mean for our reading of this and the other sonnets in the series.

Sonnet 106 sees Shakespeare return to eulogising his young lover in outwardly straightforward terms. And rather than looking ahead to times to come when his poetry will continue to pay tribute to his love long after both he and his lover have gone, as several of the other sonnets have done, he here casts his eye back to the past through the lens of the poets who have talked about the people of their day, and comes to the conclusion that they were doing just as he is doing now: trying to express the epitome of beauty. But since this had not yet been reached, because the young man of his love had not yet been born, they ended up not so much chronicling their age as predicting an age to come with his appearance in this world; and yet of course now that he is here, it is possible for Shakespeare and anyone who shares the privilege of being in his presence to admire him, but Shakespeare and his contemporaries still find it impossible to do him justice with their words.

Sonnet 105 presents a playful paradox that is no doubt fully intended on William Shakespeare's part. Addressing, for a change, not his young lover directly, but speaking to the world in general about him and about his love for him, he tells us that we should not see, and in seeing so by implication judge, this love as the worship of a human and therefore by necessity false god, and then proceeds to deify this same object of his love in terms that – in a culture of immensely powerful religious strictures – comes scandalously close to sacrilege by effectively calling him 'the one and only' and investing him with qualities that prompt immediate comparisons to the holy Trinity.

With his celebrated and much-debated Sonnet 104, William Shakespeare appears to set out to do primarily three things: first and foremost, to reassure his young lover that even now, after some appreciable time has passed since they first met, he, the young lover, is still as beautiful to him, our poet, as he was on the very first day; in other words that for him, Shakespeare, the fact that his young lover may be showing signs not so much perhaps of age as of having grown up, doesn't matter. Secondly, to alert the reader and listener – most particularly the reader and listener of the future – to our mortality and to the passing of time and to the fading nature of youth and beauty, even if the changes inflicted by time are not perceptible in the moment. And thirdly – as it turns out for some people today still most controversially – to offer a time frame for the relationship with his young man of precisely and specifically three years. All of which, and particularly of course the latter, we will discuss in this episode.

Sonnet 103 is the fourth and last in this group of four sonnets with which William Shakespeare seeks to excuse himself for not writing more poetry to, for, or about his young lover lately. Like the first two in the group, Sonnets 100 & 101 – which are so closely linked that we may treat them as a pair – this sonnet also references the poet's Muse, but unlike these two it does not address itself to the Muse, but speaks about her, or rather the paucity of the output she facilitates the production of in view of the abundant wealth of qualities possessed by the the object of which she is supposed to help the poet speak, namely, the young man.

With Sonnet 102, William Shakespeare returns to addressing his young lover directly, though still in explanation and indeed defence of the extended period of silence of which Sonnets 100 & 101 spoke, both of which were addressed to his own Muse, admonishing her for her absence. In contrast to those two poems, Sonnet 102 takes full responsibility for the dearth of praises sung in sonnet form to the young man and sets out its reasoning in an argument that is so elaborate, it doesn't quite fit the form: Shakespeare never actually manages to finish his sentence that covers the entirety of the second and third quatrain, which gives the poem an almost improvised quality that may or may not be fully intended. 

Although at first glance Sonnet 101 can stand on its own, it so closely connects to Sonnet 100 that it really in all likelihood should be considered to form with it a pair within this group of four sonnets that they are both part of. Like Sonnet 100, it addresses itself to Shakespeare's Muse – his poetic inspiration – in a series of rhetorical questions that seek to encourage her to return to him to write further poetry for and about his young lover. In doing so, it purports to offer a possible explanation for the Muse's absence, but immediately rejects this as unsatisfactory, reminding the Muse of her duty to give the object of his love longevity way beyond his own presence on earth.

Sonnet 100 is the first in a group of four sonnets that speak of a hiatus in Shakespeare's poetry writing to his young lover. In the collection first published in 1609, this follows Sonnets 97 and 98, which both highlight an absence from the young man that has felt to Shakespeare like winter, with Sonnet 99 acting as something of a bridge between the two themes. Whether, therefore, the silence on Shakespeare's part coincides with this absence, we cannot say with certainty, but it would appear plausible to say the least...

In this special episode, Professor David Crystal OBE, one of the world's leading linguists with over 100 books to his name and a global reputation as a writer and lecturer on Early Modern English, talks to Sebastian Michael about Original Pronunciation (OP) – the way William Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have pronounced English at the time, and how this changes our understanding of Shakespeare's works generally, and specifically the sonnets.

In the collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare published in 1609, Sonnet 99 is unique for two reasons that are possibly related: it is the only sonnet to consist of 15 lines instead of the usual 14, and it is the only sonnet that leans directly on a known source and can therefore be said to be a more or less direct reworking of an existing piece by another poet, rather than presenting a mere variation on a well-worn theme. The theme itself though is familiar from both classical and Renaissance poetry, but Shakespeare, as we would probably expect by now, manages to furnish his poem with one twist in particular that suggests he may be engaging in more than just a standard rhetorical exercise of imitatio.

When Sonnet 97 spoke of an absence from his lover that felt to Shakespeare "like a winter" even though it actually took place during the summer and/or autumn, Sonnet 98 speaks of either the same or a similar absence that took place during the springtime in April, which, however, on account of not having his lover around, to Shakespeare also seemed like "winter still."  With their many similarities and essentially identical themes, the two sonnets are clearly related, and it is unlikely to be a coincidence that they follow each other in the collection, although we cannot know whether our poet is here talking about a continuous absence from his lover that lasts all the way from late summer into the next spring, or whether he is talking about a renewed period of separation, or whether in fact the two sonnets have somehow got reversed in their order and we are looking at an absence that lasts from spring throughout the summer into the autumn. This latter scenario seems an unlikely one, as we discussed when looking at Sonnet 97, and so indeed do various other theories which see both these sonnets as merely emotional but not physical periods of separation, or as either referring to periods of separation from two different people, something we also saw and noted in the last episode.

Sonnet 97 ushers in a new phase in the relationship between William Shakespeare and his young lover, which, following the upheaval, anguish, doubt, and direct criticism of the young man contained in the group that immediately precedes it, comes across as a series of almost serene reflections first, once again, on a period of separation in this sonnet and the next one, and then, in Sonnets 100 to 103, on the challenge of finding the right words to speak of someone as roundly perfect as the young man, with the unusual Sonnet 99 acting as something of a bridge between the two themes that are henceforth being developed.

In this special episode, Abigail Rokison-Woodall, Deputy Director (Education) and Associate Professor in Shakespeare and Theatre at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, talks to Sebastian Michael about the challenges – and joys – of speaking verse in general and Shakespearean verse in particular: how do we do his language justice in a contemporary performance setting and how do we deal with the ways in which the English Renaissance approach to language differs from ours; with a focus also, of course, on the significance this has for reading and reciting the Sonnets.

With Sonnet 96 William Shakespeare concludes the extraordinary group of sonnets that deal with his young lover's infidelity. Easing off on the harsh criticism of the young man's behaviour voiced in Sonnet 95, he here brings in a new conciliatory tone which acknowledges that the young man's powers of attracting other people are great and that he could seduce any number of them, but ending on a plea not to do so for the sake of both, and reiterating, for the first time since Sonnet 36, the words 'I love thee', whereby, at first glance perplexingly, it is not only these three words that are repeated here, but the closing couplet in its entirety.

With his astoundingly forthright Sonnet 95, William Shakespeare admonishes his young lover in the most uncompromising terms yet, and he rounds off his salvo with another stern warning that even someone as privileged and exalted as he can go too far. It forms the culmination of a progression in tone and stance that has been underway since Sonnet 87, from almost mourning the loss of his lover, to pleading for the end, if it is to come, to come soon, to reminding the young man of their union and an apparently declared devotion to each other, to effectively claiming his entitlement to the young man's fidelity, to this: a direct condemnation of his character and conduct.

With Sonnet 94, William Shakespeare takes a step back from his discourse in poetry, addressed directly to his young lover, and reflects more broadly and apparently abstractly on a quality of mercy that ought not to be strained.The sonnet makes two at first glance almost separate observations, devoting the first eight lines – the octave – to an ethical question of how to handle privilege and power, and the following six lines – the sestet – to a metaphor of the tarnished ideal. The two are, of course, not only directly related to each other to form a compelling argument about personal conduct and integrity, but they are also firmly embedded in the group of sonnets which in the Quarto Edition follows the Rival Poet sequence: everything from Sonnet 87 to and including Sonnet 96 hangs together as a coherent string of thoughts, fears, hopes, and concerns over a relationship that is teetering on the brink of collapse, and although Sonnet 94 might in theory also be considered in isolation, it in reality only makes proper sense when read as part of this group, in which it provides something of a linchpin for the astonishing turnaround in tone and stance that is set up by Sonnet 93 and comes into full force in Sonnet 95.

Sonnet 93 is the third of three sonnets that pivot William Shakespeare's stance towards his young lover from one of pure praise and adulation to one that not just questions his conduct and character, but begins to actively admonish him. It picks up directly from the closing couplet of Sonnet 92 and imagines a situation in which the young man is unfaithful to Shakespeare without Shakespeare knowing about this, and so it compares our poet to a 'deceived husband'. In doing so it reinforces the claim made by Sonnet 92, that the young man is in effect pledged to Shakespeare for life, and it further likens their relationship to a marriage. And while this can't, of course, be read literally – not least because equal marriage did not exist at the time and Shakespeare was already married with children to Anne in Stratford – it nevertheless gives us a deep insight into how William Shakespeare views himself constellated to his young lover.

Sonnet 92 continues from Sonnet 91 and sets out a compelling – if perhaps strictly speaking somewhat sophistic – argument why the young man may, as the previous sonnet in its closing couplet considered to be a distinct possibility, leave Shakespeare whenever he feels like it, but without in doing so actually making him, Shakespeare, most wretched as a result, as the same sonnet also suggested would be the case. This sonnet thus appears to contradict the consequence to the poet of a breakup put forward by Sonnet 91, but the ostensible options it offers for his happiness are stark: I can be happy because you love me or because I am dead. Like Sonnet 91, though, this poem too weaves the thread of thought further and leads into Sonnet 93 as the third part of the argumentation and in doing so it ushers in a rather radical change in tone which will become increasingly pronounced in the two poems that then follow, Sonnets 94 and 95. 

With Sonnet 91, William Shakespeare reclaims his place in the young man's favour, and for the first time in a while – in the published sequence since the group that contains Sonnets 71 to 76 – speaks primarily of how the young man's love privileges him, Shakespeare, above all else. It is for the most part a return to a happier, more confident, more celebratory tone, which, however, tellingly is then tempered with a closing couplet that once again conjures up the spectre of this love being taken away entirely at the young man's whim.

Sonnet 90 is the third of three poems that form a 'group within a group', purporting to accept, even support, any decision the young man may wish to take to leave his poet lover, for whatever reason he deems justified. Its principal message is straightforward: if you are going to leave me, then do it now, while everything else is going against me anyway; and with this emphasis on what 'now' is like for William Shakespeare, it sheds a fairly powerful light on Shakespeare's position – or at the very least on how he perceives his position – as he writes this sonnet and the ones that accompany it.  

Sonnet 89 continues the line of argumentation set up with Sonnet 88 and expounds on the steps William Shakespeare is willing to take to demonstrate to his young man how fully he is prepared to subject himself to his will and to accept a termination of the relationship as perfectly within the young man's rights. In spelling out the things that Shakespeare will no longer do if he is thus forsaken, and in the choice of its vocabulary, the sonnet lends a fascinating insight into the nature of a relationship that is here shown to be acutely on the brink.