Featured Poem: Sonnet 94 by William Shakespeare

As we're all still on a high (and now significantly recovered) from the major excitement that was King Lear at the Garden Theatre at Calderstones last week, we're adding another Shakespearian boost to this week with our Featured Poem.

'For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds' - a line that could surely apply to Lear and his daughters? This sonnet has tons for you to consider on your Monday morning.

Sonnet 94

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Globe's production of King Lear at Calderstones Mansion House has been receiving five star reviews! Read one from the Daily Post here.