An old chestnut:  do we master texts more easily and quickly by reading or by listening?

Whichever method you support, the fact that you’ve found this website is a pleasure in itself. It does also pose the question: are the Sonnets worth reading or hearing in the first place? That is for you to decide, but what cannot be denied is that they show the Poet at his most vulnerable, intimate and self- revealing. In these 2156 lines he bestows on us the privilege of looking into his thoughts, his fears, and his hopes. The emotions and problems he describes in them are ordinary ones and ones that we ourselves regularly experience. More valuable still are the closing couplets where almost always he gives us his advice or his solution on coping with life and carrying on. He anticipates Freud and the other mind menders.

The “methodology” used was simple. The text of each Sonnet was printed from the Internet. There followed a quick reading to determine the scansion, punctuation, stresses and flow between lines. Then, with the first impression still “fresh”, a few bars of melody were played into camera and the text was read in one take. Only a handful of “gemstone” Sonnets were previously familiar, so it was a voyage of discovery. On occasions, even where punctuation was followed, the meaning of certain words or phrases remained unclear, but, curiously, when these same Sonnets are revisited, slowly a more meaningful message seems to emerge. The camera used was an ordinary point and click Sony digital in video mode and the tripod was a sturdy 1940’s example unearthed at a car boot (yard) sale. Some trade-off in sound and image quality was accepted in order to improve downloading to your computer.

The improvisations try to capture something of the simple, rhythmic and tuneful melody line of the period, without losing the intimacy of the Poet's "lark ascending" and "black dog" moments.

All this leads us back to the original question:  is it quicker and easier to master texts by reading or by listening? Perhaps with all the demands that life places on our time, the balance tips in favour of listening, especially as it’s so simple to click back and re-listen at our leisure.

And now the “rub”:  if each time you visit you can put aside a coin for those less well off than ourselves…this will be more than sufficient reward for the effort put in. Thank you!

Here, finally, is a handsome unattributed Sonnet:

When my love tells me she will dam her ears
Against the tide of ill-considered praise,
And curtains off the season’d sense of years
From that fond window of her darling gaze;
Then does her want of hearing me despair
Lest she another’s lines do predicate
And burthen my poor heart with heavy care.
Lo! then this vision of my wretched state
Doth melt her heart to pity of my plight,
So she surmise my fell predicament
And calls me forth from darkest Winter’s night
To fecund Summer of her sentiment.
Then do I counsel countenance to mime
And hold my tongue, as not to speak my mind.