It has been over 400 years since Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published. While classic lines like Sonnet 18’s ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ still resonate today, some of the sonnets can feel difficult to read to the modern reader due to the outdated language. Just look at the first four lines of Sonnet 1:
From faireſt creatures we deſire increaſe,
Sonnet 1: 1609 Quarto edition
That thereby beauties Roſe might neuer die,
But as the riper ſhould by time deceaſe,
His tender heire might beare his memory:
There are of course modern translations of these sonnets, but these do not preserve the iambic pentameter and rhyme schemes that are intrinsic to Shakespeare’s work: therefore we lose some of the character of the poems. Shakespeare used iambic pentameter to place stress on certain words, which altered in some cases the meanings of the poems themselves (think of these as hidden italics).
So could a translation of these sonnets be achieved in a more accessible language, but preserving the iambic pentameter and rhyme schemes that Shakespeare created? I have decided to give this challenge a go. Now, as with all translations, the work will never be exact to the original. But perhaps more than that, to ‘translate’ from English to English means that we may have to swap out the words intended for a similar word to fit the pattern, making it incredibly difficult to be faithful to Shakespeare’s original intentions. However, I will not turn down a challenge, so here is my ‘translation’ of Sonnet 1 (the original can be found here):
Sonnet 1: We want good-looking folks to breed themselves so that the beauty of their faces never dies; though time will cause their bodies to be shelved, an heir would carry on their hot design. But you, without a partner still in life, are burning up your beauty needlessly; you make yourself a foe, you forge your strife, by carving out a famine from a feast. You—the world's unwilted ornament in full display of its flamboyant spring— will die: and leave your graceful bud unspent with all this minginess and dallying. Show pity to the world, do not consume in life and to your grave what it is due.
Prontobard (2023)