بهترین پادکست های William Shakespeare (2025)

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Sonnet 154: The Little Love-God, Lying Once Asleep 29:32

7d ago29:32

29:32

Sonnet 154 brings to a close William Shakespeare's collection of sonnets, and it does so hand-in-hand with Sonnet 153, of which it is not a continuation, but a reiteration. Like Sonnet 153, the poem borrows directly from an epigram by 6th century Greek poet Marianus Scholasticus, and tells the story of Cupid who falls asleep in a mountain grove wit…

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Sonnet 153: Cupid Laid by His Brand and Fell Asleep 29:01

13d ago29:01

29:01

Sonnet 153 is the first of two poems that round off the collection, both retelling the same story of a tired love god Cupid who falls asleep, having put down his torch beside him. This is taken up by a nymph who dips it in a cool fountain or well with the intention of 'disarming' Cupid, but the flame of the torch is so intense that it turns the poo…

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The Dark Lady 29:39

21d ago29:39

29:39

In this special episode, Sebastian Michael summarises the second part of The Sonnets by William Shakespeare in the 1609 collection and examines the questions they present in parallel to those posed by the Fair Youth Sonnets: - Is there a Dark Lady at all? - If so, who is it? - And what, if anything, do these sonnets tell us about the poet himself, …

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Sonnet 152: In Loving Thee Thou Knowst I Am Forsworn 26:22

28d ago26:22

26:22

The last poem in the collection to address William Shakespeare's mistress directly, Sonnet 152 conclusively answers some questions, while leaving many old and several new ones open for us to ponder into posterity. It asserts again that his Dark Lady is indeed 'dark', both in appearance and in character, and here makes a stronger than ever point of …

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Sonnet 151: Love Is Too Young to Know What Conscience Is 23:23

1M ago23:23

23:23

The heavily and obviously innuendo-laden Sonnet 151 returns to a struggle the poet purports to experience between what his soul – the 'nobler part' of his being – knows to be right and what his body wants and, with the by implication reluctant permission of the soul, then also gets: sex with his mistress. Although coached in euphemism and metaphor,…

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Sonnet 150: O From What Power Hast Thou This Powerful Might 34:06

1M ago34:06

34:06

The at first glance unspectacular Sonnet 150 sets off from the base laid down by the previous three sonnets and now wonders out loud just how the mistress with her numerous and by now well established flaws and a beauty that could – according to these poems – be most charitably described as unconventional, manages to make our poet love her at all, …

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Sonnet 149: Canst Thou, O Cruel, Say I Love Thee Not 29:49

2M ago29:49

29:49

After establishing in the previous two sonnets that he is possessed of a 'fever' that makes him 'mad' and that distorts his vision, William Shakespeare uses Sonnet 149 to further describe the effect this love for his mistress is having on him. So much is he in her thrall that no-one whom she hates he can love, no-one she admires he may disdain. Jus…

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Sonnet 148: O Me! What Eyes Hath Love Put in My Head 29:49

2M ago29:49

29:49

In Sonnet 148, William Shakespeare develops the themes revisited with Sonnet 147 and further elaborates on his realisation that reason has abandoned him and he is therefore incapable of judging properly what he sees. Either that, or his eyes themselves are faulty, since they seem to distort what they are looking at. The conclusion he comes to, much…

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Sonnet 147: My Love Is as a Fever, Longing Still 28:37

2M ago28:37

28:37

In Sonnet 147, William Shakespeare brings together two themes that have agitated him before: firstly the at the time fairly commonplace notion of love – and, more to the point, desire – as a disease that weakens the mind to the point of an irrational madness and afflicts the body in a similarly stark fashion, and secondly the ways in which his mist…

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Sonnet 146: Poor Soul, the Centre of My Sinful Earth 34:55

2M ago34:55

34:55

With his solemn, near pious, Sonnet 146, William Shakespeare for the first and only time speaks directly to his soul and entreats it to look after itself; to stop expending its energy on the pursuit of outward, physical adornments which are all doomed to swift decay – effectively starving and weakening itself whilst feeding and strengthening the gl…

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Sonnet 145: Those Lips That Love's Own Hand Did Make 31:52

3M ago31:52

31:52

Sonnet 145 stands out in the collection for several reasons. Some factual, some conjectural, some somewhere in-between. Most obviously and beyond interpretation evident is the fact that it is the only poem composed in iambic tetrameter: it consists of 14 lines of eight syllables each, in contrast to the iambic pentameters present in all the other s…

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Sonnet 144: Two Loves I Have, of Comfort and Despair 35:25

3M ago35:25

35:25

With his exceptionally explicit and startlingly revelatory Sonnet 144 William Shakespeare addresses head on the fact that his mistress and his lover are certainly friends, and that he suspects – rather strongly, we get the impression – them to be so with benefits. By identifying the man as 'right fair' and contrasting him with a woman who is 'colou…

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Sonnet 143: Lo! As a Careful Housewife Runs to Catch 17:32

3M ago17:32

17:32

With his uncharacteristically lighthearted Sonnet 143, William Shakespeare plants a picture in our minds of the poet as a crying toddler placed on the ground while his mother is running after a wayward chicken, and expresses his hope, not unreasonable in the imagined circumstances, that the mother, once she has caught the bird she's chasing, will c…

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Sonnet 142: Love Is My Sin, and Thy Dear Virtue Hate 22:06

3M ago22:06

22:06

With Sonnet 142 William Shakespeare picks up on the notion of 'sin' employed in the last line of the previous sonnet, and now juxtaposes this sin or sinful love of his for his mistress with her supposed 'virtue' in rejecting this love for being sinful, while simultaneously undermining any suggestion that she is in fact virtuous by asking her to jus…

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Sonnet 141: In Faith, I Do Not Love Thee With Mine Eyes 33:37

3M ago33:37

33:37

Sonnet 141 is one of several poems in the collection that show William Shakespeare to be deeply ill at ease with his lust and his love for his mistress. It may easily be argued that all of the Dark Lady Sonnets come over with a greater or lesser degree of ambiguity, with her appearance, her comportment, her smell, her touch, her sound, and most cer…

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Special Guest: Professor Phyllis Rackin — Shakespeare and Women 45:19

4M ago45:19

45:19

In this special episode, Phyllis Rackin, Professor Emerita of English from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and former president of the Shakespeare Association of America talks to Sebastian Michael about the position of women in Elizabethan society, about William Shakespeare's relationship with the women in his life, and about what we…

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Sonnet 140: Be Wise as Thou Art Cruel, Do Not Press 28:19

4M ago28:19

28:19

With Sonnet 140, William Shakespeare at first seems to set out on some general counsel for his mistress not to try his patience too much, as doing so might drive him mad and cause him, in his madness, to say bad things about her. The damage this could do would be exacerbated by a world that is itself full of mad people who would be inclined to beli…

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Sonnet 139: O Call Not Me to Justify the Wrong 19:20

4M ago19:20

19:20

With Sonnet 139, William Shakespeare finds himself quite comfortably in the domain of the classical Petrarchan sonnet, invoking the themes and poetic tropes that other sonneteers of the period, most notably Sir Philip Sidney in his Astrophel and Stella use to speak about their mistress's capacity to captivate and, if they so wish, kill them with th…

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Sonnet 138: When My Love Swears That She Is Made of Truth 21:56

4M ago21:56

21:56

With Sonnet 138 William Shakespeare takes a step back and reflects on how both he and his mistress in their relationship with each other are effectively living a lie which they both actively conspire to maintain: she pretends to be faithful to him although she fully knows that he knows that she obviously isn't, and he goes along with it when she tr…

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Sonnet 137: Thou Blind Fool Love, What Dost Thou to Mine Eyes 26:16

5M ago26:16

26:16

In Sonnet 137, William Shakespeare draws together two of the themes established by the 'Dark Lady Sonnets' thus far: his mistress's unconventional beauty and her sexual freedom. Following the near-obsessive punning of Sonnets 135 and 136, which lent them a humorous, light-hearted tone, our poet settles back into a more evenly rounded style that is …

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Sonnet 136: If Thy Soul Check Thee That I Come so Near 27:31

5M ago27:31

27:31

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 p…

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Sonnet 135: Whoever Hath Her Wish, Thou Hast Thy Will 28:38

5M ago28:38

28:38

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 fin…

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Sonnet 134: So Now I Have Confessed That He Is Thine 38:54

5M ago38:54

38:54

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 m…

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Sonnet 133: Beshrew That Heart That Makes My Heart to Groan 37:51

6M ago37:51

37:51

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…

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Sonnet 132: Thine Eyes I Love, and They, as Pitying Me 27:33

6M ago27:33

27:33

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…

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Sonnet 131: Thou Art as Tyrannous so as Thou Art 22:34

6M ago22:34

22:34

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 beau…

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Sonnet 130: My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun 28:58

6M ago28:58

28:58

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 mi…

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Sonnet 129: Th'Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame 28:16

7M ago28:16

28:16

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, ev…

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Sonnet 128: How Oft When Thou, My Music, Music Playst 26:41

7M ago26:41

26:41

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 …

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Sonnet 127: In the Old Age Black Was Not Counted Fair 26:31

7M ago26:31

26:31

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 wit…

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The Fair Youth 1:02:43

7M ago1:02:43

1:02:43

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 Y…

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Sonnet 126: O Thou, My Lovely Boy, Who in Thy Power 43:13

7M ago43:13

43:13

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 ultim…

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Sonnet 125: Were't Aught to Me I Bore the Canopy 29:58

8M ago29:58

29:58

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, Sh…

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Sonnet 124: If My Dear Love Were But the Child of State 29:12

8M ago29:12

29:12

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 s…

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Sonnet 123: No! Time, Thou Shalt Not Boast That I Do Change 26:21

8M ago26:21

26:21

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 l…

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Sonnet 122: Thy Gifts, Thy Tables, Are Within My Brain 34:37

8M ago34:37

34:37

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 t…

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Sonnet 121: Tis Better to Be Vile Than Vile Esteemed 31:51

9M ago31:51

31:51

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 doi…

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Sonnet 120: That You Were Once Unkind Befriends Me Now 37:57

9M ago37:57

37:57

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…

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Sonnet 119: What Potions Have I Drunk of Siren Tears 28:11

9M ago28:11

28:11

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…

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Sonnet 118: Like as to Make Our Appetites More Keen 24:47

9M ago24:47

24:47

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 sens…

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Sonnet 117: Accuse Me Thus, That I Have Scanted All 32:59

10M ago32:59

32:59

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 posit…

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Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds 29:32

10M ago29:32

29:32

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 th…

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Sonnet 115: Those Lines That I Before Have Writ Do Lie 28:26

10M ago28:26

28:26

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 g…

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Sonnet 114: Or Whether Doth My Mind, Being Crowned With You 35:51

10M ago35:51

35:51

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…