Sonnet by TaciturnFriend 2024 Web Site

About the Story

Written very quickly for the SeedComp 2024, entirely over the extra weekend...

The seeds I used:
Reverse a poem
Palates

Content warnings:
Mildly nsfw for kissing and sexual references. In some playthroughs, a moment of violence. Occasional well-concealed snippets of Literature.

Feedback, bugs and comments:
All gratefully received.

Notes
The core poem it responds to is Sonnet 128. But a certain amount of playful imagining of the characters of the rest of the sequence snuck in too. Assuming there is a definitive answer to the question of who the real-life counterparts of Shakespeare's "dark lady" and "fair youth" may be is a fool's errand; they're literary constructs. But I've run with the thought that they may as well have been Henry Wriothesley, and the wife of John Florio (whose name history does not record, but I'm not the first to use Aline). Jack emerged from the poem's "saucy jacks" of the harpsichord.

Game Details