Audiobook · read by volunteers
Sonnet 028
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Read by Alan Clare, Brad Powers, JemmaBlythe, James Gladwin, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Wabbit98, Lee Ann Howlett, Micki Folmar, Mary Mac, Sibella Denton · 12 chapters · 14 min
About the book
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 28 is a short poem about longing and sleeplessness. The speaker cannot rest, because separation from the person he loves turns every day into a burden and every night into a restless hour of thought. He wonders how he can be at peace when neither daylight nor darkness brings relief, and the poem ends on a note of sorrowful honesty. In this recording, twelve different LibriVox volunteers each read the sonnet in their own way. Because the words are the same, the differences are all in the voices: the speed, the pauses, the weight of a single word. Lasting about twelve minutes in all, the collection is a fascinating small lesson in how a fourteen-line poem can sound different every time it is spoken. Twelve voices, fourteen lines, and a single feeling, heard twelve different ways.
Introduction
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) published his sonnets in 1609, a sequence of 154 poems that has been read and argued over ever since. Many address a young man, others a dark-haired woman, and together they trace love, jealousy, time and the power of verse to preserve what time destroys. Sonnet 28 belongs to a group in which the speaker mourns being apart from his friend.
The recordings are part of a weekly poetry project organised by the LibriVox community in the summer of 2007. Volunteers are invited to record the same short text so that listeners can compare readings, and each one here is marked with the reader’s initials. You might choose a favourite, or listen to several in a row and notice how a simple change of emphasis alters the sense of a line. For anyone who loves Shakespeare, the exercise is a pleasure.
The sonnet form itself, with its quatrains and closing couplet, gives each reader a clear shape to work with, and the repeated listening makes its structure easy to hear. It is a fine way to spend a quarter of an hour.
Twelve recordings, about twelve minutes in all, are read by LibriVox volunteers. Listen first with the words in mind, then again with your attention on the reader: where the voice slows, where it lifts at the couplet, and whether the last line sounds like a complaint or a confession. Sonnet 28 is short enough that you can hear all twelve readings before your tea has cooled. It is the kind of poem that gains from comparison: the plain statement of the opening lines and the slow weight of the closing couplet are easy to hear when the same words are spoken twelve times.
Public domain
William Shakespeare died in 1616: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text