Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayShakespeare’s Sonnets, Retold
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreSummary
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Retold by William Shakespeare and James Anthony, with a foreword by Stephen Fry. Read by Stephen Fry, Paapa Essiedu and the author.
Rediscover the greatest love poetry ever written
Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?
You’re more delightful, always shining strong;
High winds blow hard on flowering buds in May,
And summer never seems to last that long…
Shakespeare’s sonnets are some of the nation’s favourite lines of verse, but the Elizabethan language can make it difficult to really understand them. Many guides offer to clarify the meaning, but lose the magic of the words by explaining them away.
James Anthony has done something boldly different.
He has rewritten the whole series of poems as sonnets using modern language, while retaining the rhythm and rhyme patterns that gives them such power. In doing so he breathes new life into the original poems and opens them up for a modern readership, demystifying Shakespeare’s eternal poetry with provocative new translations and delightful new lines.
With the original sonnets read by Stephen Fry, and the modern translations read by Paapa Essiedu, this is a stunning collection of beautiful love poems, made new.