Shakespeare AI-Sonnets

Using OpenAI's GTP-3 modell, you can easily generate texts of various styles and even impersoate others. I used it to generate sonnets by feeding it with Shakespeare's works. You can read the AI-generated Shakespeare-like sonnets here, please enjoy!
The source code is available on GitHub. Learn More.

Davinci

This Engine by OpenAI is said to be the most promising. Upon generating some sonnets, I noticed that it already knew all of Shakespeare's works and just copied them almost without modification.
Some, like the first sonnet, were actually meaningfully changed. Others, however, were just carbon copies. This meant that I had to give Davinci some direction and gave it some new words and ideas as a parting point. This technique worked very well and resulted in some interesting sonnets.

Sonnet 1

"O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
A crow that’s trodden on will leave a stain;
A lily, hit with a storm, will have a bruise;
But thou, unhurt in thyself, though thou hast taken
Affliction’s stroke, and worn sorrow’s livery,
Thou hast nor crow’s foot, nor blot, nor stain,
To grace the subject of truth’s history.
Pity me then, thou who art so pure and white,
That thou thyself hast pity on my truth,
And not to tell the world how well thou art,
But how I am punish’d for loving thee."

Sonnet 2

"My will, not my power, doth possess my thoughts in you.
One touch of you, and I am a-fire;
Your beauty, my dear, is your only eye-sight;
Your brightness blinds me with a greater dazzling.
As the moon’s sphere doth act upon the sea:
Wherefore no marvel though I fain would dwell
In the admiring of your majesty,
That makes me to forget all business else.
"But since you are only woman and not goddess,
My fate will be an earthly misery;
And therefore do I pray to some power divine,
To give me leave to mourn a while in vain."

Sonnet 3

"A woman which is young, and fair,
In men’s eyes as goodly to appear;
As a fresh bud which on the top doth sit
Of sweetest briar rose: or a bright jewel
Set in the silver sea. The summer's day,
That for his pride is only sovereign,
To her is not so full of goodly heat:
For oft the sun is to himself untrue;
And being clouded then she shows more bright.
Yet mark what foul trespass doth her blot,
The weight which it bears makes still that spot."

Sonnet 4

"It is thy picture, and not thy company;
That now makes my heart burst out with rhyme:
For, if a friend thou hast that holds his peace,
In time of need to aid thee and thy rhyme;
If any such there be (as sure there is not),
Then neither white nor red can dye thy name.
Dost thou in conscience think that I could write
This glowing screed, and not omit thy name?
I will have fame with profit still conjoin’d;
Then farewell peace, till some more worthy come.
In vain I see the lily's virgin hue:
The breath of heaven cannot preserve it long.
How soon may I in thee, my heart's delight,
And all thy little beauties, lose delight!
Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars;
Welcome soft peace with its roses double."

Sonnet 5

"To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d
In process of the seasons have I seen;
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
To me you are as you were; unchangeable;
But, then, my judgment is perhaps too nice:
Since I have seen you change in mood and mind,
And that two lovers to one another prove."

Curie

While being not as good as Davinci, Curie was also promising and actually a bit more intelligent for my use-case. It never gave me a refurbished Shakespeare work, always creating an entirely new one.
The downside was that these are, in my opinion, not as Shakespeare-ry as some of the good Davinci results and sometimes very short, but they also have a unique flair to them:

Sonnet 6

"This is a jewel! this mine eyes gaze on;
It cannot good come of, but evil look:
To have it so before me doth invite
Ill thoughts to work in me, ill turns aside.
For on the rims thereof thou hast device;
Such vanity I know not what to call.
The very thought of it my heart doth pain,
For all the sweet in it is sick and deadly.
What hath a woman to do with grisly death?
Why should she live when so fair a jewel can die?"

Sonnet 7

"When to the session of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.
And then I counsel them that love is wise,
That love is prosperous and is every way;
That love is honour and is everywhere
And most in this, that love is always the same."

Sonnet 8

"I loved thee first, and thy dear love hath won me;
And I have owned it, although thou hadst not asked it:
I am a foolish prating fool to heaven,
That hides my blissful secrets from every eye:
My thoughts fly up and dwell with thee alone,
O my dear love, my dear love! Is not this joy?
My bonds are sweet; they tell me thou dost love:
I have no longer cause to say I lov’d thee.
Thou must be mine and I thine, for we were made for one another."

Sonnet 9

"O, never was a story of more woe
Than this of mine! O love, it was full strange:
The woes that I have since thee seen are none;
But all in love’s despite. In faith they were sore-seeming.
I fear thy beauty much when thou art by,
And much I fear thee when thou art from me.
For all the world is weary of my story;
Men think that it imports them nothing to hear it:
O that mine eye might hold a cup of wonder!
I should not then be desolate for ever."

Sonnet 10

"Let us not then be rash and of your love complain,
As though it were some light thing to contain:
Our love is great and would be greater still,
If that our great love could make it less.
Think not my heart so light, or his so light,
But that my love may be as great as his.
Is it so much, that I should mourn and pine,
Because my love is not among the living?
O no, it is the life that I should mourn,
And not love’s death, to have his love from me."

Shakespeare Itself

I was also curious what I would generate when I began the sonnet with “Shakespeare” and then let it complete the sonnet for me.
Well the result is this:

"Shakespeare, thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
Else "all the poets" with one voice would swear
Thou hadst as much of either as should serve,
To schmear a glove. But master of your art,
That’s more than all the world beside can teach.
And is all "that you know?" Then, give me that;
A pox of your hard-won ‘art’! and if some be,
More gentle, call them Nature’s artists then!"

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