reccomend a soliloquy from shakespeare to me

However, you could impress the ladies using Richard III with the charming "I can smile, and murder while I smile, and set the murderous Machiavel to school", however.

"all the world's a stage" from as you like it would probably be your best bet.

WHEN in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 5
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state, 10
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

And a couple inna "wedding toast" style:

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
Both grace and faults are lov'd of more and less:
Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort.
As on the finger of a throned queen
The basest jewel will be well esteem'd,
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated, and for true things deem'd.
How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
If like a lamb he could his looks translate!
How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!
But do not so; I love thee in such sort,
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone:
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.

I don't know if that's the sort of thing on aging to be the thing.

anyone versed in the sonnets? i need to use one for college, i'm obviously delving through myself, but curious if people have any favourites?

What purpose will this sonnet be put to once you have chosen it? Recitation aloud? Critical deconstruction? Some of the more obscure ones would be fun to break down and discuss, but pure torture to recite.

Recitation but it's the voice training side of the diploma I'm doing, obviously it's an acting class so it'll be acted too. I was thinking about this one but I'm still browsing really: http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/132

143 has very homely imagery and contrasts quite starkly with the high flown verbage of most of the sonnets. 113 is both psychologically sound and imaginative, but has some ugly metrical flaws.

But if you want a sonnet where he hits his full magnificent stride then "When out of favour with Fortune and men's eyes" is the top dog imo.

yeah that one is kind of a bullseye alright :)

yeah, I think most of the dozen or so top anthology pieces have their place for a reason - they work taken out of the sequence, they're incredibly rhetorically involving, are sonically astonishing & have depth without being baffling. 129 used to be my favourite of them, but I think that ranking is still tied tied up with adolescent self-loathing. Let me get some numbers for other favourites… 53, 60, 87, 146.

It's just an astonishing collection of poems though, just so resiliently strange; and not 16th-century strange, its own whole world of strange.

I've prob said this somewhere else, but Don Paterson's book on them is the best work of poetry criticism I've read in an age – has done 'the reading' but then is just bouncing around between thinking about love, & rhetoric and reading them as a (fine) working poet himself, and getting sucked into sequence-narratives while trying to resist them. Really masterful combo of close reading & worldliness. If you only read one book on the sonnets, etc…

On the Garbage thread we lauded precision. I can think of few sonnets as perfectly engineered as the sonnets.

idk, I think there's a lot of shonky work in there. I mean (just to take the trad criticism) he blows the couplet with such regularity! Slips into cheese or platitude or a tortuous rhyme. I am cheering for him when he actually pulls off a final one-two. But I think the up-and-down-ness is the delight of it - he's in this intense psychological world that basically no-one else is worrying at round then, and is finding forms & a language for it, & sometimes getting lost, & sometimes hitting the basic renaissance toolkit, & sometimes just doing the numbers - but there isn't an achievement like it, both read at length & for those poems where he absolutely nails it.

that sonnets site is my dad's btw. #1 google result! design by yrs truly! (including shoddy overflowing text and adverts)

Cool! It's a really great site - I hadn't really looked on the web before, so had never seen it - so much stuff (& nice design – clean, I can find things!) Barnes is there! I've never read Barnes, that's my morning sorted.

Ian McKellen talking about this Macbeth soliloquy is like - I'm maybe in it 25% for his insights, and 75% for the man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGbZCgHQ9m8