Vanya Grigorova reads Shakespeare

The video begins with the logos of Living Braille and Braille 200.

Then, Vanya Grigorova reads sonnets by William Shakespeare. She is seated in a grey fabric armchair, in a room with wooden acoustic panels. On her lap lie two large Braille books. As she reads, a box appears in the top-left corner of the video displaying the English text of the sonnets.

In this section, Vanya reads Sonnet 8:

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,

Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,

By unions married, do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

Resembling sire and child and happy mother

Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;

Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.”

Afterward, Vanya finds the next sonnet, number 25, and continues reading aloud from minute 1:00 to 1:48:

Let those who are in favor with their stars

Of public honor and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,

Unlooked for joy in that I honor most.

Great princes’ favorites their fair leaves spread

But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,

And in themselves their pride lies burièd,

For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior famousèd for worth,

After a thousand victories once foiled,

Is from the book of honor razèd quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.

Then happy I, that love and am beloved

Where I may not remove nor be removed.

Vanya switches to a different book and continues by reading Sonnet 116 until the end of the video:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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