Shakespeare's Sonnets, Retold
Classic Love Poems with a Modern Twist
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Fry
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James Anthony
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Paapa Essiedu
About this listen
An enlightening and entertaining collection of the most esteemed love poems in the English canon, retold in contemporary language everyone can understand.
James Anthony has long enjoyed poetry with a strict adherence to beat, rhythm, and rhyming patterns, which he likens to the very best pop songs. This drew him to the rewarding 14-line structure of Shakespeare’s sonnets, yet he often found their abstract language frustratingly unintelligible. One day, out of curiosity, he rewrote Sonnet 18 - "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day" - line-by-line, in the strict five-beat iambic pentameter and rhyming patterns of the original, but in a contemporary language a modern reader could easily understand. The meaning and sentiment - difficult to spot, initially - came to life, revealing new intricacies in the workings of Shakespeare's heart.
And so, James embarked on a full-time, year-long project to rewrite all 154 of the Bard's eternal verses creating Shakespeare's Sonnets, Retold. This collection of masterful reinterpretations brilliantly demystifies and breathes new life into Shakespeare's work, demonstrating the continued resonance of a playwright whose popularity remains over 400 years after his death. Now, the passion, heartbreak, deception, reconciliation, and mortality of Shakespeare’s originals can be understood by all, without the need to cross-reference to an enjoyment-sapping study guide.
Coming with a foreword by Stephen Fry, this is a stunning collection of beautiful love poems made new.
Read by Paapa Essiedu, James Anthony, and Stephen Fry.
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Story
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a poem, translated by Bayard Taylor, which tells the beautiful and emotional story of a man who has seen and done it all. However, despite all of his learning and education, his life still feels empty and unaccomplished. He believes wholeheartedly that there is something else out there. Faust, having exhausted all other fields of study, turns to magic for fulfillment. He summons the devil and makes a pact - that if the devil can show him something rewarding and fulfilling, he will give the devil his soul.
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Misleading
- By Grant Pajak on 03-29-17
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Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
- By: John Milton
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Paradise Lost, along with its companion piece, Paradise Regained, remain the most successful attempts at Greco-Roman style epic poetry in the English language. Remarkably enough, they were written near the end of John Milton's amazing life, a bold testimonial to his mental powers in old age. And, since he had gone completely blind in 1652, 15 years prior to Paradise Lost, he dictated it and all his other works to his daughter.
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SELL YOUR SHIRT FOR THIS AUDIO BOOK!
- By thomas on 04-23-11
By: John Milton
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Falstaff
- Give Me Life
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.
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Falstaff brooks no rebuttal.
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Harold Bloom
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La Vita Nuova (The New Life)
- By: Dante Alighieri
- Narrated by: Jack Wynters
- Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Composed around 1294 in Italian, the Vita Nuova tells the story of Dante's encounters with and love for Beatrice, culminating in her early death and its effect upon him. Utilizing and developing the conventions of courtly love, in a mixture of prose and verse, Dante deepens the emotional content of the genre, while pointing the way towards the intellectual and spiritual journey of the Divine Comedy.
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Deeply moving
- By Michael J Gore on 07-08-21
By: Dante Alighieri
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La Vita Nuova [The New Life]
- By: Dante Alighieri
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Written in alternating prose and poetry, La Vita Nuova is a profound reflection on the nature of love, devoted to Dante's muse Beatrice. Following Beatrice's death in 1290, Dante became obsessed with the young Florentine woman, whom he only ever knew from a distance. He believed his love for her was a form of divine love and saw her as an image of salvation itself - a theme that is later explored in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, where she guides him through heaven.
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A must
- By Barnaby on 11-15-20
By: Dante Alighieri
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De Profundis
- By: Oscar Wilde
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 1 hr and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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At its heart, De Profundis is a love letter and is better known as the De Profundis papers. Written in 1897, while Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol, De Profundis would become one of his best-known works. The papers include Wilde's account of living a lavish lifestyle and his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, both of which he credited for his eventual downfall and imprisonment. The second half of the papers is Wilde's account of prison life and his spiritual awakening.
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This Work Really Is Wilde Going Off...
- By James E. Lytle on 05-16-21
By: Oscar Wilde
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- By: J. R. R. Tolkien
- Narrated by: Terry Jones
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.
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An absolute delight!
- By Shannon Slee on 07-15-18
By: J. R. R. Tolkien
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The Plays of Sophocles
- Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone
- By: Sophocles
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Sophocles was born at Colonus, near Athens in about 496 BC and is considered to be one of the premier playwrights of Greek tragedy. His stories may have been filled with strife, but Sophocles himself was prosperous and came from a good family. It is said that he was handsome, wealthy, and a highly respected citizen of Athens. During his life, he wrote over 120 plays and was instrumental in how plays would eventually be performed, including the addition of stage props.
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Bad Dialogue
- By Zoe Olvera on 08-12-18
By: Sophocles
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 32 mins
- Unabridged
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A bird of good omen is murdered. A fickle crew is punished by supernatural, spectral beings. A skeletal ship is sighted moving against the wind and tide. The figure of Death along with a singular, gruesome companion man the fiendish craft. And as they draw closer, it becomes clear that the two play at dice for the soul of the ancient mariner. The result is nothing short of cataclysmic.
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A classic well read
- By Gary on 08-08-16
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The Consolation of Philosophy
- By: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
- Narrated by: Peter Wickham
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Charged with treason under Theodoric the Great in sixth-century Rome, Boethius served one year's imprisonment, awaiting trial and eventual execution. During this time, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, which would go on to be one of the most popular philosophical works of all time, contributing much to medieval thought and influencing the likes of Dante and Chaucer, as well as Renaissance writers, such as Milton and Shakespeare.
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The Bestseller for a 1000 Years
- By Ken on 02-05-22
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Eugene Onegin
- A Novel in Verse
- By: Alexander Pushkin, James E. Falen - translator
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s imperial Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men - Onegin the bored fop, Lensky the minor elegiast, and a stylized Pushkin himself - and the fates and affections of three women - Tatyana the provincial beauty, her sister Olga, and Pushkin's mercurial Muse.
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Pushkin and Falen are brilliant, Corkhill not bad
- By Jabba on 05-17-15
By: Alexander Pushkin, and others
What listeners say about Shakespeare's Sonnets, Retold
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Laurel Williams
- 03-09-24
I liked it. It makes the sonnet accessible.
I liked having the sonnets read first in old English then in new. Sometimes I liked one more than the other. But having the new interpretation right after helped me understand the original.
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- Emma
- 02-01-23
Super Dry
I love shakespear, I love the narrators. I thought this would be interesting, fun, but nope. So dry it's incredibly hard to get through. I love the translations, I think that is helpful and unique, but something is missing to make this as interesting as it could be. Perhaps background music? I'm not sure.
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2 people found this helpful