***

I hope the title for this post does not refer too much to my posting my 2016 Shakespeare Sonnet Slam video here. My excuses: 1) the producers did an excellent job capturing all the performances on video; 2) it’s edifying to watch a video record of oneself  in order to see if the external reality lined up with what the internal experience had been;  3) theater and live performance can be a frustratingly ephemeral experience—it’s nice to have a tangible artifact of the occasion for one’s mental (and virtual) scrapbook.

My previous analysis of the sonnet is here.

You can follow along, including my flub in line five:

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
   ‘Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
   Painting my age with beauty of thy days.