Shakespeare's Sonnets 18 and 116, read in a 17th century pronunciation

This reconstructed pronunciation is largely based on the Orthographie of John Hart and the work of Patricia Wolfe and Roger Lass. (An explanation of my principles can be found here www.thomaswhic... or here • Shakespeare’s pronunci... .)
Transcript:
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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 wand'ring 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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

[@jeffreymeyer1191]

Your reading is marvelous and heartfelt. Nicely recorded and lighted. I feel transported to the late 17th century. You even look the part. May I request that you perform my favorite sonnet-Sonnet 94: They that have the power to hurt and will do none? And even more sonnets are welcomed.

[@ThomasWhichello]

Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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 wand'ring 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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

[@rishthefish7781]

This sounds very Scottish and beautiful to me :). I know there is a drama troupe that performs entire plays or some acts of some selected plays with this pronunciation.

[@LordJordanXVII]

"Literally" in love. A great reading, and a great channel!

[@pullivermittens6596]

Incredibly reading its so good I was squealing like a pig in cold mud on a summers day

[@duncanthaw6858]

I don't think your day and date are quite right. Date should be half way between pan and pen, not part. I frankly doubt day was not a diphthong by this point, but that might be a matter of opinion.

[@ThomasWhichello]

Thank you for your comment. /ae:/, as you say, is one valid quality for words like "date" during this period, since /a:/ was undergoing a process of raising to /ɛ:/ which would be completed by about 1650. Roger Lass writes: “ME /a:/ shows some raising in the sixteenth century, but is not stable at /ɛ:/ until well into the seventeenth.” /a:/ is a conservative choice. I use it because John Hart appears to recommend /a:/, and I prefer the sound of it.
Both monophthongal and diphthongal pronunciations of “day” are, in my opinion, valid for this period; John Hart having /dɛ:/, and Alexander Gil /dai/.

[@duncanthaw6858]

@@ThomasWhichello Yeah but Alexander Gil was a bit nuts... I suppose there were probably people who did say it that way, but then again that might be said of a lot of things.