Synopsis
Simon Callow's readings explores the hidden drama of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Similar plays, poems and sonnets

Words and Music | Writers and the BBC
Featuring 'Sonnet 18' by William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's Sonnets
The first of a series of programmes in which Simon Callow's reading explores the hidden drama of the sonnets by following a radical reordering by John Padel. Believing that the mysterious W H is William Herbert, it suggests that the poems were initially commissioned to convince W H to marry. The later passions and anguish of the poems then reveal the poet.