Poetry in English: William Shakespeare

Portrait of William Shakespeare by John Taylor
William Shakespeare is an English poet, playwright and actor.  He is born in Stratford-upon-
Avon, Warwickshire, England, on April the 26th, 1564, and dead on April the 23rd, 1616.  He arrives in London and becomes a writer and actor for the company called Lord Chamberlain's Men, later renamed to King's Men.  In time, members of the company including Shakespeare build their own theatre, called The Globe.

His mostly known works are:
  • Poetry:  154 sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece.
  • Theatre: 39 plays in verse (11 tragedies, 17 comedies, 11 historic plays).
Digital Libraries that hold available works of William Shakespeare:

Sonnet XVIII.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Kai Kreowski has put Sonnet 18 to music, sung by Lisa Ketzner and himself, and made it available at YouTube:

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