#sonnet 30

Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare (read by Sir John Gielgud)

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

Since it was created in 2013, he has also staged it around Europe in the three other languages he speaks: French, Portuguese and Spanish. And because the premise of “By Heart” is that Rodrigues, 44, brings 10 audience members onstage to teach them a Shakespeare sonnet, he has also learned the poem in Greek and Russian, for shows in Thessaloniki, Greece; Moscow; and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Midway through a recent interview at the Lisbon playhouse he has directed since 2015, the grand-looking Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, he recalled the first four lines of the sonnet — No. 30, which begins, “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought” — in Russian, with obvious delight.

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Sonnet 30:

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare (read by Sir Kenneth Branagh)

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before.

Sonnet 29 and Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare (read by Sir Patrick Stewart) 

"Another take on Sonnet 29 and Sonnet 30, new to me but have grown fond of it. #ASonnetADay" (@SirPatStew)

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 possessed, 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 remembered such wealth brings       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

• ────────────────────────────────── • Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before.

Steiner had an answer to that. Among much else the message is that what you have up here, in your head, the bastards cannot take. They can rob you, arrest you, disappear you, perhaps even kill you. Perhaps they can kill almost everyone, or at least make a very good try. But they cannot take a memory once it is embedded like this. They cannot take the Russian language, or the English language. They cannot take Shakespeare, just as they cannot take Pasternak. They may be able to take many writers—and they did. But they cannot take us all. So long as we carry what we have up here—so long as we furnish our heads with the important things—nothing important can truly die.

That is why I always think of Pasternak, the writers in the hall, and those writers who didn’t make it through 1938 (poet Osip Mandelstam in particular), when I think of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30.