Poem

Sonnet 18 — Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day — Read Aloud

by William Shakespeare

114
words
49s
at 140 WPM
Moderate
difficulty
3
speed presets
Reading time at three speeds
Slow · 110 WPM
1:02
Natural · 140 WPM
49s
Brisk · 170 WPM
40s

How to read it

Read "Sonnet 18 — Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" at a relaxed 140 WPM (~49s). Breathe at each stanza break and let line endings carry a slight pause rather than a full stop. Slow to 110 WPM for your first pass while Telepront's voice-scroll learns your pace, then push to 170 WPM once the rhythm feels natural.

Read-aloud scriptAuto-scrolls in Telepront
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; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

"Sonnet 18 — Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by William Shakespeare (1609). Public domain.

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Open the text and it auto-scrolls as you speak — voice tracking follows your pace hands-free, so you can focus on delivery instead of the screen.

Questions about this text

How long does it take to read "Sonnet 18 — Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" aloud?

About 49s at a natural 140 WPM, 1:02 taken slowly, or 40s at a brisk 170 WPM. It is 114 words long.

Is "Sonnet 18 — Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by William Shakespeare in the public domain?

Yes. Published in 1609, it is in the public domain in the United States and free to read, record, and practice with.

How do I practice reading this with a teleprompter?

Open it in Telepront and the script auto-scrolls as you speak, matching your pace hands-free so you can focus on delivery.

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