Sonnet Walk 2015
Rack’s Close – Sonnet 14 – Fortune Teller in a caravan
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
Castle Cliff Gardens – Duke Senior from As You Like It – Tai Chi
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
'This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I would not change it.
Alice Through the Looking Glass - Sonnet 78 – Lewis Carroll talking to Alice
So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse
And found such fair assistance in my verse
As every alien pen hath got my use
And under thee their poesy disperse.
Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly
Have added feathers to the learned's wing
And given grace a double majesty.
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
Whose influence is thine and born of thee:
In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
But thou art all my art and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance.
Castle Keep – Richard II
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented…
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and by and by
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing. Music do I hear?
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
This music mads me; let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
Jellicoe Roof Garden – Perdita, from The Winter’s Tale
Here's flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun
And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age. You're very welcome.
Now, my fair'st friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bight Phoebus in his strength--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er!
Come, take your flowers:
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals…
The Underfcoft - Sonnet 147 – a person gone mad with unrequited love
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Stevens & Bolton Amphitheatre – Hamlet’s advice to the players
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too
much with your hand, thus, but use all gently. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise.
Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot
but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a
whole theatre of others.
O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, that have so strutted and
bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well,
they imitated humanity so abominably.
And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them
that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the
mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and
shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.
St Nicholas Church – Sonnet 116 - Jilted bride on steps or in garden opposite Keystone.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Porridge Pot Alley – Sonnet 110 – a homeless person
Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely: but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confined.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
The Britannia Pub – a scene from The Comedy of Errors
ANTIPHOLUS
Why, how now, Dromio! Where runn'st thou so fast?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Do you know me, sir? am I Dromio? am I your man? am I myself?
ANTIPHOLUS
Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
I am an ass, I am a woman's man and besides myself.
ANTIPHOLUS
What woman's man? and how besides thyself? besides thyself?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman; one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that
will have me.
ANTIPHOLUS
What is she?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
A very reverent body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of without he say 'Sir-reverence.' I
have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage.
ANTIPHOLUS
How dost thou mean a fat marriage?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Marry, sir, she's the kitchen wench and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but to make
a lamp of her and run from her by her own light.
ANTIPHOLUS
What complexion is she of?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing half so clean kept: for why, she sweats; a man may go over
shoes in the grime of it.
ANTIPHOLUS
What's her name?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that's an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from
hip to hip.
ANTIPHOLUS
Then she bears some breadth?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out
countries in her.
ANTIPHOLUS
In what part of her body stands Ireland?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Marry, in her buttocks: I found it out by the bogs.
ANTIPHOLUS
Where Scotland?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
I found it by the barrenness; hard in the palm of the hand.
ANTIPHOLUS
Where England?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in them; but I guess it stood in her chin, by
the salt rheum that ran between France and it.
ANTIPHOLUS
Where Spain?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath.
ANTIPHOLUS
Where America, the Indies?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Oh, sir, upon her nose all o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich
aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of caracks to be ballast at her nose.
ANTIPHOLUS
Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Oh, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude, this drudge, or diviner, laid claim to me, call'd me Dromio;
swore I was assured to her!
ANTIPHOLUS
Go hie thee presently, post to the road:
An if the wind blow any way from shore,
I will not harbour in this town to-night:
If any bark put forth, come to the mart,
Where I will walk till thou return to me.
If every one knows us and we know none,
'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack and be gone.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
As from a bear a man would run for life,
So fly I from her that would be my wife.
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