The Rhythm of the Sonnets

Charles Wolff

The Rhythm of the Sonnets was my semester project for an Introduction to Shakespeare class at Mesa Community College in Mesa, Arizona, during the Spring 1998 semester.

The goal of the project was to take a dozen of Shakespeare's sonnets and adapt them for use as contemporary song lyrics. This required investigating and studying the sonnets, selecting sonnets to use for the songs, adaptating the original texts for use as lyrics, and writing, arranging and recording the final songs. This process, along with the final results, are documented on these pages.

The created songs were recorded in my home studio, using "Band In A Box" software to create the basic tracks, and adding vocals, guitars, synthesizers and other instrumental parts. The songs were recorded on an 8-track reel-to-reel deck, mixed down to DAT, and transferred to a one-off CD. I have included Real Audio clips of portions of each song to the individual song pages.


Real Audio Samples Are Now Online!

Text Portions Still In Progress

Research Notes

The Songs


Maintained by: Charles Wolff
Last Updated: 4/9/98