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Hi folks, it's Boris Johnson here on International Shakespeare Day, International Shakespeare Week
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I'm here teaching at the University of Miami and yesterday I met a student, a female student
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who was unbelievably, it was called Sonnet. In case she was from California and all cool things like
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Sonnet or Cupboard or Bucket or whatever, she was called Sonnet. I said, Sonnet, do you know any sonnet
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She didn't know any sonnet, so I said, Sonnet, you've got to know a sonnet by Shakespeare. Here it is
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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate
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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath o'er too short a date
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Sometime too bright the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed
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And every fair from fair sometime declines, by time or nature's changing course untrimmed
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But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou werest, nor shall death brag thy wanderest in his shade, as in eternal lines to time thou growest
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As long as men have breath and eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee
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Anyway, that was the sonnet. And I say to you, it's a very, very handy thing to have in your head
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if you ever want to impress a member of the opposite sex and you can't believe anything to say. Keep a sonnet under your bonnet
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Boris Johnson reporting from Miami International Shakespeare Week
