A Sonnet a Day http://norman.walsh.name/2004/09/11/sonnets 7 163 2004-09-11T09:13:21-04:00 $Date$ Norman Walsh 2004 Norman Walsh The sonnets of William Shakespeare. Ben Jonson He was not of an age, but for all time. I was really intrigued a couple of months ago when I encountered The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci and Finnegans Wake available on a “page a day” basis via an RSS feed. I tried to read them, but it turns out that I’m not really in the right frame of mind for it when I’m working, and a page a day really doesn’t provide enough context for me to enjoyably read a novel. I thought it was a cool idea though, and I’ve been trying to think of something that I could enjoy in that format. The answer (an answer, anyway) struck me yesterday. Actually, Doug Bunting is really the responsible party, though I’m sure he didn’t know it at the time. In a private reply to one instance of the “information resources” permathread on www-tag, Doug included a link to a web page and on that page I saw a reference to Shakespeare’s sonnets. That’s when it hit me, that’s the perfect kind of text for “page a day” reading. When this page was written, it marked the beginning of a 154 one-a-day odyssey through Shakespeare’s sonnets. For a while it showed them randomly, now it cycles through them so you can pick up the 154 day cycle at any time (albeit in the middle except for once every 154 days). The sonnet text comes from The Gutenberg Project and appears under the following copyright:
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION. ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY. PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.
I believe that my use falls within those guidelines. Make sure yours does too. Subscribe to the feed, if you want to play along. That many of Shakespeare’s sonnets are about love and that this project should begin on 11 Sep is a complete coincidence, but a happy one, I think.