Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Shakespeare's Sonnets Performed

After comparing the text of sonnet 116 and sonnet 29 to their performed versions, I found an enormous difference in how I saw the poem when I read it and when I watched it performed. To get the full effect of this difference, read the text of the sonnet before you watch its visual interpretation.
Here is the plain text of 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
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.

And here is the poem's performance in in the film version of Sense and Sensibility by actress Kate Winslet:


Now the same comparison between the text of sonnet 29:
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 possess'd,
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 remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.


And its performance by Matthew Macfadyen:

One of the main differences I found between reading the text and watching the performance of the text was that the performances were more engaging and entertaining than reading the poem on my own. I still love reading Shakespeare on the page in order to glean out personal meaning from the poem, but I found that I took personal meaning from the performed version as well. It is amazing when the sonnet is performed and the emotions of the poem suddenly become so vivid and understandable. The performances brings visual art and written art together to form a more entertaining experience, and makes the poem more clear in what its trying to do as well as more relatable. What did others see in the comparison between the sonnet's text and its performance?

4 comments:

  1. Wow this is pretty cool. I did a similar post on the difference between script and stage with Shakespeare. It is pretty awesome that we are able to take in more than what the text offered because of body language, voice tone, music etc.

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    1. Yea it is.I like how you said that because it's true, body language and tone of voice paired with music can show us things we hadn't seen before.

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    2. I kindof wrote my next post called "What Is The Genre of Performance Poetry Anyway?!" based on your comment. Thanks for the ideas!

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  2. I really liked the adaption of Sonnet 29! Just goes to prove that maybe the reason people think Shakespeare no longer applies is because they haven't seen it performed, much less well.

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