Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

Shakespeare's 154 sonnets are some of the most breathtaking, exquisite, yet succinct investigations into what it means to be human within the entire literary canon. The whole breadth of human experience is explored in these beautifully detailed and achingly honest outcries to love, loss, and everything that lies between.

Using a rich selection of the sonnets and accompanied by complementary music, we explore the story of what it means to take the risk of being truly human: to love, to lose and ultimately, hopefully, to learn.

The Rose Theatre is the perfect location for these often under-valued and under-performed sonnets: at once intimate and epic, the space offers an opportunity to focus on these forensically detailed hymns to humanity in close up, whilst at the same time affording them a dramatic sweep in which they can truly, yet sweetly sing.

The sonnets are often likened to a very intimate autobiography of Shakespeare's private life and loves. 'Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang' develops this further and investigates, within a form as substantial as any of the great plays, the desolations and joys that life affords each and every one of us.

The Rose is an indoor archaeological site, it is advisable to dress with an extra layer as there is no heating.