Your fibreglass doth th'impression fill
which vulgar vandals stamped upon my bonnet;
What care I for smart cars,
The hamster is happy in my carburettor.
You are my Silverstone,
My fruitful Bernie,
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
Can take your place on the starting grid.
                                  from Sonnet 112
(Your love and pity doth th'impression fill)

Inspired by the flotsam of contemporary culture, Philip Terry transforms Shakespeare's sonnet sequence into a celebration of language unleashed. The results are as disrespectful and anarchic as a cartoon - and as assured in their control of line. Philip Terry, an acclaimed translator of the poetry of Raymond Queneau, plays language games by the rules of Oulipo in his creation of a Shakespearean chimera, the hybrid that takes on a life of its own.

Cover Image © copyright Grant Shipcott

Contents

1 (‘From fairest creatures we desire increase’)
2 (‘When forty winters shall besiege thy brow’)
3 (‘Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest’)
4 (‘Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend’)
5 (‘Those hours that with gentle work did frame’)
6 (‘Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface’)
7 (‘Lo, in the orient when the gracious light’)
9 (‘Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye’)
13 (‘O that you were yourself! But, love, you are’)
14 (‘Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck’)
15 (‘When I consider every thing that grows’)
17 (‘Who will believe my verse in time to come’)
18 (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’)
20 (‘A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted’)
22 (‘My glass shall not persuade me I am old’)
23 (‘As an unperfect actor on the stage’)
24 (‘Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled’)
25 (‘Let those who are in favour with their stars’)
26 (‘Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage’)
27 (‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed’)
28 (‘How can I then return in happy plight’)
30 (‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought’)
32 (‘If thou survive my well-contented day’)
33 (‘Full many a glorious morning have I seen’)
34 (‘Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day’)
36 (‘Let me confess that we two must be twain’)
37 (‘As a decrepit father takes delight’)
38 (‘How can my muse want subject to invent’)
39 (‘O, how thy worth with manners may I sing’)
40 (‘Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all’)
41 (‘Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits’)
42 (‘That thou hast her, it is not all my grief’)
44 (‘If the dull substance of my flesh were thought’)
45 (‘The other two, slight air and purging fire’)
46 (‘Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war’)
48 (‘How careful was I when I took my way’)
49 (‘Against that time – if ever that time come –’)
50 (‘How heavy do I journey on the way’)
51 (‘Thus can my love excuse the slow offence’)
53 (‘What is your substance, whereof are you made’)
54 (‘O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem’)
55 (‘Not marble nor the gilded monuments’)
56 (‘Sweet love, renew thy force. Be it not said’)
57 (‘Being your slave, what should I do but tend’)
59 (‘If there be nothing new, but that which is’)
60 (‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore’)
61 (‘Is it thy will thy image should keep open’)
62 (‘Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye’)
63 (‘Against my love shall be as I am now’)
64 (‘When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced’)
65 (‘Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea’)
66 (‘Tired with all these, for restful death I cry’)
67 (‘Ah, wherefore with infection should he live’)
68 (‘Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn’)
69 (‘Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view’)
71 (‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead’)
72 (‘O, lest the world should task you to recite’)
74 (‘But be contented when that fell arrest’)
75 (‘So are you to my thoughts as food to life’)
77 (‘Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear’)
78 (‘So oft have I invoked thee for my muse’)
79 (‘Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid’)
80 (‘O, how I faint when I of you do write’)
81 (‘Or I shall live your epitaph to make’)
82 (‘I grant thou wert not married to my muse’)
83 (‘I never saw that you did painting need’)
84 (‘Who is it that says most which can say more’)
85 (‘My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still’)
86 (‘Was it the proud full sail of his great verse’)
87 (‘Farewell – thou art too dear for my possessing’)
88 (‘When thou shalt be disposed to set me light’)
89 (‘Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault’)
90 (‘Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now’)
91 (‘Some glory in their birth, some in their skill’)
92 (‘But do thy worst to steal thyself away’)
94 (‘They that have power to hurt and will do none’)
95 (‘How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame’)
96 (‘Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness’)
97 (‘How like a winter hath my absence been’)
98 (‘From you have I been absent in the spring’)
99 (‘The forward violet thus did I chide’)
100 (‘Where art thou, muse, that thou forget’st so long’)
101 (‘O truant muse, what shall be thy amends’)
102 (‘My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming’)
103 (‘Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth’)
106 (‘When in the chronicle of wasted time’)
107 (‘Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul’)
108 (‘What’s in the brain that ink may character’)
109 (‘O never say that I was false of heart’)
110 (‘Alas, ’tis true, I have gone here and there’)
112 (‘Your love and pity doth th’impression fill’)
113 (‘Since I left you mine eye is in my mind’)
115 (‘Those lines that I before have writ do lie’)
116 (‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’)
117 (‘Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all’)
120 (‘That you were once unkind befriends me now’)
121 (‘’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed’)
122 (‘Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain’)
123 (‘No, time, thou shalt not boast that I do change!’)
124 (‘If my dear love were but the child of state’)
125 (‘Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy’)
126 (‘O thou my lovely boy, who in thy power’)
127 (‘In the old age black was not counted fair’)
128 (‘How oft, when thou, my music, music play’s’)
129 (‘Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame’)
130 (‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’)
131 (‘Thou art as tyrannous so as thou art’)
132 (‘Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me –’)
133 (‘Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan’)
134 (‘So, now I have confessed that he is thine’)
135 (‘Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will’)
136 (‘If thy soul check thee that I come so near’)
137 (‘Thou blind fool love, what dost thou to mine eyes’)
139 (‘O, call not me to justify the wrong’)
140 (‘Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press’)
141 (‘In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes’)
142 (‘Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate’)
143 (‘Lo, as a care-full housewife runs to catch’)
144 (‘Two loves I have, of comfort and despair’)
145 (‘Those lips that love’s own hand did make’)
146 (‘Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth’)
147 (‘My love is as a fever, longing still’)
148 (‘O me, what eyes hath love put in my head’)
149 (‘Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not’)
150 (‘O, from what power hast thou this powerful might’)
151 (‘Love is too young to know what conscience is’)
152 (‘In loving thee thou know’st I am foresworn’)
153 (‘Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep’)
154 (‘The little love-god lying once asleep’)