William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is regarded as the greatest writer England has ever produced. He wrote 154 sonnets. For her ‘Three Shakespeare Sonnets’, Annette Kruisbrink selected numbers 17, 40, and 66, setting them to music for voice and guitar.
The original structure of Shakespeare’s sonnets, a fourteen-line poem made up of three quatrains, or sets of four lines, and one concluding couplet, or set of two rhyming lines, has been adapted - without doing injustice to the text - into a form of two quatrains, followed by a set of two rhyming lines and a third quatrain for sonnets 17 and 40. The division in sonnet 66 is two times six lines, concluded by a couplet.
These different forms create a recognizable musical structure that harmonizes remarkably well with Shakespeare’s style of poetry writing.
Sonnet 17 is about the theme of immortalizing beauty and love through poetry. Sonnet 40 explores themes of love, betrayal, and forgiveness. Sonnet 66 is a powerful expression of frustration and despair about the corruption and injustices in the world.
