Lyrics by Shakespeare Conceived and written by Karyn Levitt Leslie Shaak Hitelman, composer/pianist Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. Karyn Levitt and Leslie Shaak Hitelman give you Shakespeare’s words as you like it and as never heard before! Lyrics by Shakespeare is a remarkable celebration of The Bard’s poetry and prose. Some of his greatest speeches are interwoven with his most beautiful sonnets in an unforgettable tapestry of words and music. The sonnets enter the 21st century as contemporary songs: from pop to Broadway, from classical to blues, tango, klezmer, and even country western. These knock-your-socks-off tunes become the vehicle to explore Shakespeare’s meditations on time, immortality, love, and other metaphysical themes. The show is divided into two parts and is approximately one hour long. The first part uses the Ages of Man speech spoken by Jacques in As You Like It as the structure for the performance of seven sonnet-songs, each one depicting one of seven life stages. It’s a little play performed with a few props: a stool, a coat rack with scarves and hats for the different characters, a mic, a mic stand, and a tambourine for the klezmer number. Ms. Levitt speaks about Shakespeare’s life and times in this first half. The second part of the show is all love sonnet-songs. And Ms. Levitt speaks about how music has always been integral to Shakespeare’s plays and sings the Renaissance song O Mistress Mine composed by Thomas Morley for Twelfth Night, to illustrate the point that Morley’s music was the popular music of the day just as Leslie Shaak Hitelman’s music captures the popular sounds of our time. Performances :: Oberlin College (Ohio) :: Shakespeare & Company Bankside (Lenox, MA) :: The Center for Arts Natick (TCAN) :: Jimmy Tingle's Off-Broadway :: Mariposa Museum of Cultural Heritage (Peterborough, NH) :: Boston Sonnet-thon at the Boston Public Library Review of Lyrics by Shakespeare “Not since Cleo Laine or Martin Best have I heard sung Shakespeare that seems so right.” —David Young, Shakespeare Scholar and Emeritus Professor at Oberlin College