Guest Blog: Nicholas de Jongh

My play Pricked Out may be set in Dorset on Midsummer's Day 2016, where two young men meet and make a sensational discovery about themselves, but the focus is on time past - in the shape of William Shakespeare and the extraordinary revelation of his sonnets, published in 1609 to far more embarrassed silence than to general applause. It was the playwright's greatest act of self-exposure and a most uncharacteristic one at that from a man known for his canniness and personal diplomacy…