Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

Neon Nerd Nolan Recites Shakespeare!

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30

(For Emily)  🙂

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

 

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 64, read by Eric Robert Nolan

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald reads from William Shakespeare’s “Othello”

Act I, Scene 3.

 

Tom Hiddleston reads William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

Eileen Atkins as Emilia in William Shakespeare’s “Othello”

This is an installment in Guardian Culture’s “Shakespeare Solos” series.

 

W. H. Auden reads “Alonso to Ferdinand”

This is my favorite poem of all time — read by my favorite poet of all time.

Once again, this is an excerpt from Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” first published in 1944.

 

Tom Hiddleston reads Sonnet 130, by William Shakespeare

What an incredible reading — his articulation is so relaxed and clear.  I wish I could speak this way.  Loki’s got game.

 

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.”

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

 

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“Sonnet 29,” by William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

 
 

william-shakespeare-profile

 

“Full fathom five thy father lies,” read by Eric Robert Nolan.

From William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”  For Emily. 🙂

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
                                        Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them,—ding-dong, bell.