Three Sonnets

The Royal Shakespeare Company have started a Share Your Shakespeare project to encourage people during the lock-down to read a speech from a poem, act out a speech from one of the plays etc. So this is my brief contribution to that - three of the Bard's sonnets.
Sonnet 29 I have chosen because I first heard it read aloud several decades ago by the American actor Ron Perlman, who has a fantastically gravelly voice well suited to poetry. I can fully sympathise with the poet's words, having had many occasions in life when I have wished I were much more like some very impressive person or another rather than just being a ginger hobbit (mind you, Old Will was a ginger too - look at that beard!). Not quite so many experiences of the Thy Sweet Love, but that's what happens when you're a hobbit.
Sonnet 81 is here because, in these dark times, there will be many people looking at family, friends, lovers etc. and wondering if all too soon one will be attending the funeral of the other. It also speaks to the kind of immortality that wordsmiths achieve not only for themselves but also for the objects of their creative endeavours.
Finally Sonnet 123 made me think of something that the Lord of Time himself might say - and perhaps he did, when he met Shakespeare in his 4th and 10th regenerations... you can have that one!

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