Wedding reading
from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanes
Plato, tr. Benjamin Jowett
“from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanes” by Plato, tr. Benjamin Jowett is a prose reading read at a wedding ceremony. It takes about two minutes read aloud, usually by a guest reader. It is in the public domain, so the full text is printed on this page and goes straight into a ceremony script.
The full text
Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, 'What do you people want of one another?' they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: 'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of two—I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain this?'—there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.
Public domain, so these words can be printed in a ceremony script or an order of service.
What it is about
Where "your other half" comes from, in the passage that put it there. Nearly two minutes of one unbroken sentence-chain — give the reader the page a week early.
Read at a wedding ceremony. Themes: your other half · two halves of one whole · the desire and pursuit of the whole · Hephaestus offering to melt them into one · ancient Greek · where the phrase comes from · a long reading · a reader who can hold a room · a couple who met late.
Questions about reading it aloud
How long does “from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanes” take to read aloud?
“from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanes” takes about two minutes read aloud at a ceremony pace, which is slower than conversation — roughly 130 words a minute. That is the figure the run-sheet uses when it works out the timing for the whole service.
Who usually reads “from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanes”?
Usually a guest reader rather than the officiant. “from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanes” runs about two minutes, which is a manageable amount to hand to a friend or family member. Give them a printed copy of their own, in a size they can read without their glasses, and tell them where to stand and how you will introduce them.
Can “from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanes” be printed in a ceremony script?
Yes. It is in the public domain, so the full text is on this page and can be printed in a script or an order of service.
Where this text was checked
Checked word for word against a full-text edition that is itself the authority — a Project Gutenberg or Wikisource transcription, a publisher’s own edition, or the issuing body’s page.
Checked
A reading is two minutes of the hour.
The rest is the welcome, the vows, the ring exchange, the pronouncement — and the timing that holds them together. Answer some questions about the couple and get the whole ceremony, written out, with this reading in its place.
Other readings that suit the same service
- from Jane Eyre — ten years marrieda minute and a halfCharlotte Brontë
- On Marriage, from The Propheta minute and a halfKahlil Gibran
- On Becoming Real, from The Velveteen Rabbit55 secondsMargery Williams
- from Obergefell v. Hodgesa minute and a halfJustice Anthony Kennedy
- from a letter to Fanny Brawne, 13 October 181925 secondsJohn Keats
- from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness15 secondsVictor Hugo, tr. Isabel F. Hapgood