The Dark Lady: A Triptych

Music by Stephen Brown ©2023 Words by William Shakespeare and Raymond Tallis Maria Heseltine (mezzo-soprano) and the Corineus String Quartet From a lunchtime concert in Penzance Methodist Chapel, UK on 31st July 2024 Lyrics: 1. William Shakespeare: Sonnet 81 Or I shall live, your epitaph to make; Or you survive, when I in earth am rotten; From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die; The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read, And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead. You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen, Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. ------------- 2. William Shakespeare: Sonnet 127 In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame: For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profan’d, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Slandering creation with a false esteem: Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so. -------------------------------- 3. Raymond Tallis: Meta-sonnet to the Dark Lady Or shall I live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten. There's nothing of you lives in these his lines they did not lift you clear of death in pain. Long since, beneath the air that heard his rhymes, you flowed away, dissolved like him in rain. Your ghost shook off the flesh, its thrilling dark, those evening tones his fluent verse acclaimed. What's saved of you? The tetchy question mark of rival experts squabbling when you're named. Your smooth white neck was lost to red-lipped lust when Night reclaimed the sable from your hair. Dark Lady, arid footnotes, learned dust your absence, wide and sexless as the air, behind the word-webbed nothing of your face, makes these his sonnets crypts for empty space. ---------------