About Arlene Schulman Expertise I have loved Shakespeare all my life, and as a Stage Director and Actor for over twenty-five years I have had the opportunity to study his work in intimate detail. I would be happy to share my knowledge of his plays. I can also help with acting Shakespeare, working with blank verse, character development, script analysis and interpretation. I don`t have as much knowledge in the area of his sonnets, but I can help to understand their meaning and language. I also have some knowledge of his life and of the Globe theatre where he performed his plays, as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company and his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, and can point you in the direction of some wonderful websites on the subjects as well.
Experience
Organizations SSDC - associate member The Shakespeare Institute (MA Candidate - "Shakespeare & Theatre)
Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas
The Shakespeare Association of America
Question Do you happen to know the meaning of WS's line "And every fair from fair sometime declines"? Thanks in anticipation.
James
Answer Hi James,
Sure.
Sonnet 18 is one of Shakespeare's best known. In it's first line he asks if he should compare his love to a summer's day. Then, in the next 11 lines he mentions various ways in which they differ. First he says that summer days tend to be extreme, while his love is "temperate." Then he says that summer is fleeting... and that's where this line comes in.
Here he says "And every fair from fair sometimes declines." That is, that every beautiful thing eventually becomes less beautiful and ultimately dies (flowers fade, trees lose their leaves and become bare, summer becomes winter, and people become old and die).
But in the final quatrain Shakespeare explains how his love's beauty will never grow old and die, since it is preserved in the words of this poem and will last forever.
