Welcome back to Book Break!
I am here today at Shakespeare's Globe, which is very very exciting.
And, surprise surprise, we're going to be talking about Shakespeare today!
And how relatable his writing still is today.
By looking at a Shakespeare poem for every mood.
So, I am here today with Sarah Llewellyn-Shore, and we'er going to be going through this amazing
book, Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, which I have found so useful going through
and finding it's got little poems, little quotes on every page, with a little bit of
introduction to give you some context.
So, that is where Sarah comes in. So do you want to explain a bit about what you do here?
Yeah, so I'm an actress originally, also I'm a youth theatre director here.
And I am, something I'm really proud of, I'm a storyteller, so what we do is we take a
Shakespeare play, and then we turn it into an hour to 45 minute performance, where we
retell that story, to many different audiences, from very young six year olds, right up to
adults.
Amazing.
So, in terms of going through Shakespeare's different emotions, let's kick things off
with love.
The emotion that maybe he's most famous for writing about.
Of course, everyone's heard the sonnet that starts Shall I compare thee to a summer's
day?
But I have been going through to look at ones that are maybe a little less cliche.
The poem that's been put on here for the page for Valentine's Day is Sonnet 29, which I
thought was really funny actually, and really sweet.
So it's basically, the whole sonnet is this guy just complaining about his life, and how
he's never really achieved what he wanted to achieve, and he's not rich enough and successful
enough.
But then right at the end he says 'for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that
then I scorn to change my state with kings'
So it's kind of like reminding himself what really matters in life, and that his love
is the most important.
Which I thought was really sweet but quite a funny one.
You know, one of the reasons that I love Shakespeare is that, I think I was saying to you before,
it's never, it's never black and white emotions.
And we always do, he can relate, if you like, to human emotion.
There's often times when we think the grass is greener.
Yeah, it's very real.
Which brings me to the next one I picked, which is also very honest.
So this is Sonnet 130.
And this is kind of subverting the whole like 'shall I compare thee to a Summer's Day' idea,
because in this one he starts by saying
'My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun Coral is far more red than her lip's red'
And it goes on basically just saying like, she's not all these amazing beautiful things,
she's not as good as this nature or that nature.
But then the last bit is
'And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, as any she belied with false compare'
So it's, you know, she might not be as beautiful as the sun or coral but she's real and he
loves her.
Do you have any other favourites on love?
To state the obvious, but with Romeo and Juliet
When Romeo, Romeo says 'it is my lady, O it is my love, O that she knew she were'
There's that real kind of, it always makes me feel a bit like that, because there's that
real longing.
The significance of the O in that, the kind of, the surprise, the wonderment, the, all
that emotion that's just in like one letter.
Yeah.
I think is fantastic.
From the poem Venus and Adonis, there was just one little line I really liked that said
'love comforteth like sunshine after rain'
Which I really liked, it was really sweet and simple, but I felt like it was so true.
You can almost kind of imagine it being like a Taylor Swift lyric.
Because it's so relatable!
Shakespeare, Taylor Swift, you know, basically the same.
And then while we're on the topic of love, I did find one that I thought would be a great
reading for a wedding.
You said that you had it at your wedding, so I was right, it was a good one.
I conformed to the cliche.
No I think it's great.
This is Sonnet 116.
'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.'
I mean obviously I had it at my wedding, so I love that.
Good reason, it's a brilliant one.
OK, so moving on to, linked to love but a more complicated emotion, again very relatable
to a lot of people, is jealousy.
I really love the way that Shakespeare is able to show jealousy through Leontes in A
Winter's Tale.
Especially for young people, children who have all these emotions, and jealousy's quite
prevalent, it's a very natural human emotion, that we are taught to repress.
It's almost like a guilty thing to feel jealous.
And actually when Leontes says 'too hot, too hot', it's a really good way for children
to kind of go 'yeah actually, that, I can't describe exactly what this is, but this is
the feeling that I've got, this heat, this kind of bubbling that I can't contain, that
overspills.'
OK, so the next emotion I was looking at is that of missing somebody, so I found here
Sonnet 97, which had a really good description I thought
I used to be in a long distance relationship and I read this and was like 'oh god, that
really cut me deep'
So the first line I'll just read is 'how like a winter hath my absence been from thee, the
pleasure of the fleeting year'
And then the sonnet goes on to describe how it's actually summer at the time he's writing
it, but he just kind of can't enjoy all the beautiful nature without the person he wants
to share them with, and I think that's something, whether, you know, whether it's a long distance
relationship, or just a friend who's far away that you want to share things
That's such a kind of true thing that
You're experiencing something that should make you happy, and you can't, because you
want to share it with someone
Yeah, he understands those emotions, and is able to depict them so beautifully with the
imagery.
It's not the way we talk every day, you know, it's not the way that we express ourselves,
but perhaps it's the way that we internally express ourselves, but we're just not 'allowed'
or don't feel that we can flood our language, if you like, with these kind of self-expressions.
Yeah, that's really interesting, and someone writing so long ago to still be able to cut
straight to the heart of what we're feeling.
It's so relatable!
I think if you look at any of his plays, there will be at least one thing you can relate
to.
So, the next emotion, a big one, is heartbreak.
Oh, yes.
This is one we've all felt, and, you know, it can be very all-consuming.
Just a really really simple one I found from As You Like It.
'True is it that we have seen better days'
Which I really liked because it's so simple, and it's quite wistful, it's not desperately
sad, it's actually quite a nice acknowledgement that you have gone through nice things together.
But it's just, I think that kind of wistfulness is what made it feel really really sad to
me.
So that one I really liked.
Do you have any favourite ones about heartbreak?
I do.
Again I'm going back to The Winter's Tale.
Paulina says 'O cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it, break too'
Mmm.
And
You can just
I mean 'cut my lace', it's
Everybody was corseted, women were corseted at that time,
and you can just imagine the heartbreak is so huge that the corset can't contain how
big her heartbreak is.
It's like what you said earlier about, that might not be the way we talk, you know if
I was sad and I walked into a room and was like 'oh you know, rip off my clothes because
my heart's breaking', people would be like 'all right, calm down'
But actually sometimes that is the way it feels, you know when you're alone in your
room and you're crying, it does feel like your heart is physically breaking apart
We don't talk that way, but we still feel that way
Absolutely, it's what we carry.
We all carry something
And
If I, if you were having the worst day ever, which I hope you're not, but if I said to
you today 'how are you', you'd probably go 'yeah I'm ok'
Yeah
But it's, it's what we carry, and it's how we describe, you know, that whatever it is,
that weight, or that heat, or that, that breaking apart.
And yeah, Shakespeare's just a master of it for me.
It is pure poetry of the soul.
Yeah.
I think.
Absolutely.
So while we're on the topic of sad things, I found some quotes that I thought would be
good for funerals.
So this one here is one that I definitely had heard before, that particular quote.
'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.'
And then finally, so we've been talking about end of life, if we move on to talk about beginning
of life, something a bit nicer.
So a really sweet one from Much Ado About Nothing.
'Then there was a star danced, and under that was I born'
I kind of thought that would be a nice inscribing on a present for a new baby or something.
That one's really beautiful.
It's nice isn't it?
No I really love that.
This, there's lots of different references to, to stars and astrology in Shakespeare's
plays.
Which helps us invest in the magic.
Yeah!
Oh brilliant, well thank you so much for helping bring Shakespeare to life for me.
You're welcome!
It's been great.
And I'll put everything in the description box below if you want to book yourself into
one of the storytelling sessions, they sound really amazing.
I love them.
Telling Tales is for, usually for families, so it's about making sure that the young ones
can understand and follow the story, so you have to have clarity, but it also has to be
interactive.
They have to feel like they're part of the story, that's really really key and really
important.
And it's also about sparking something in them.
So making them curious.
Oh it sounds amazing, I want to go!
Come!
Yeah, sounds brilliant.
So do give this video a thumbs up and leave a comment if you've got any Shakespeare poems
and quotes of your own.
And of course, hit that subscribe button below for new Book Break videos every Thursday.
Coming up next week we're talking about books to make a difference in the world.
So don't miss out on that one.
See you next time! Thank you!