Happy Belated, Will

Let me not to the marraige 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 wandering 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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-Sonnet CXVI

Yesterday was the 442nd anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, as well as the 390th of his death, and apparently the Royal Shakespeare Company is celebrating by performing all of his works.

There are certainly performances I'd take a pass on-I've hated A Midsummer Night's Dream ever since I studied it something like four times in a row in high scool, and there's a reason that Henry VI, King John and Titus Andronicus aren't often performed-but it sounds awesome. They do a thing here and I imagine in most reasonably sized cities where they read all of the sonnets on the 23rd, and one of these years I'm going to find out about it before it happens. Until then, having given you my 2nd-favourite sonnet, here's my favourite:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Coral is far more red than her lips' red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts be dun.
If hair be wires, black wires grow upon her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white
but no such roses see I in her cheeks
and in some perfumes is there more delight
than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
that music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go-
my mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
as any she belied with false compare.

-Sonnet CXXX