Sonnet 18, often alternately titled
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?, is one of the best-known of
154 sonnetsShakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...
written by the English
playwrightA playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. Part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets
1Shakespeare's 1st sonnet is urging the young man he is writing to not to waste his beauty by not fathering a child. The intended recipient of this and other sonnets is a subject of scholarly debate, with many believing it to be Henry Wriothesley. See: Identity of "Mr...
-
126Sonnet 126 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's the final member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet shows how Time and nature coincide....
in the accepted numbering stemming from the first edition in 1609), it is the first of the cycle after the opening sequence now described as the
Procreation sonnetsThe term procreation sonnets is a name given to Shakespearean sonnets numbers I to XVII .They are referred to as the procreation sonnets because they all argue that the young man to whom they are addressed should marry and father children, hence procreate...
. Most scholars now agree that the original subject of the poem, the beloved to whom the poet is writing, is a male, though the poem is commonly used to describe a woman.
Sonnet 18, often alternately titled
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?, is one of the best-known of
154 sonnetsShakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...
written by the English
playwrightA playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. Part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets
1Shakespeare's 1st sonnet is urging the young man he is writing to not to waste his beauty by not fathering a child. The intended recipient of this and other sonnets is a subject of scholarly debate, with many believing it to be Henry Wriothesley. See: Identity of "Mr...
-
126Sonnet 126 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's the final member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet shows how Time and nature coincide....
in the accepted numbering stemming from the first edition in 1609), it is the first of the cycle after the opening sequence now described as the
Procreation sonnetsThe term procreation sonnets is a name given to Shakespearean sonnets numbers I to XVII .They are referred to as the procreation sonnets because they all argue that the young man to whom they are addressed should marry and father children, hence procreate...
. Most scholars now agree that the original subject of the poem, the beloved to whom the poet is writing, is a male, though the poem is commonly used to describe a woman.
In the sonnet, the speaker compares his beloved to the
summerSummer is the warmest of the four temperate seasons, between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice...
season, and argues that his beloved is better. He also states that his beloved will live on forever through the words of the poem. Scholars have found parallels within the poem to
Ovid'sPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
TristiaThe Tristia is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of Augustus's banishment of the greatest living Latin poet to Pontus in 8 AD remains a mystery...
and
Amores, both of which have love themes. Sonnet 18 is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, having 14 lines of
iambic pentameterIambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama. The term describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called "feet"...
ending in a rhymed
coupletA couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
. Detailed exegeses have revealed several double meanings within the poem, giving it a greater depth of interpretation.
Paraphrase
The poem starts with a flattering question to the beloved—"
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The beloved is both "
more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day. The speaker lists some negative things about summer: it is short—"
summer's lease hath all too short a date"—and sometimes the sun is too hot—"
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved has beauty that will last forever, unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's day. By putting his love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever. "
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The lover's beauty will live on, through the poem which will last as long as it can be read.
Context
The poem is part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets 1-126 in the accepted numbering stemming from the first edition in 1609). It is also the first of the cycle after the opening sequence now described as the
Procreation sonnetsThe term procreation sonnets is a name given to Shakespearean sonnets numbers I to XVII .They are referred to as the procreation sonnets because they all argue that the young man to whom they are addressed should marry and father children, hence procreate...
, although some scholars see it as a part of the Procreation sonnets, as it still addresses the idea of reaching eternal life through the written word, a theme of sonnets
15Shakespeare's Sonnet 15, a procreation sonnet, is a reflection on the destruction of Time and Decay, and its effect on the young man to whom the sonnet is addressed...
-
17Shakespeare's Sonnet XVII, the last of his procreation sonnets, questions his own descriptions of the young man, believing that future generations will believe them to be exaggerations if he does not make a copy of himself .-Synopsis:...
. In this view, it can be seen as part of a transition to
sonnet 20William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20 was published in a collection of 154 sonnets in the early seventeenth century. This particular sonnet is infamously known and widely interpreted due to questions raised regarding the sexuality of the narrator, and therefore Shakespeare himself...
's time theme. There are many theories about the identity of the 1609 Quarto's enigmatic dedicatee,
Mr. W.H.Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...
Some scholars suggest that this poem may be expressing a hope that the
Procreation sonnetsThe term procreation sonnets is a name given to Shakespearean sonnets numbers I to XVII .They are referred to as the procreation sonnets because they all argue that the young man to whom they are addressed should marry and father children, hence procreate...
despaired of: the hope of metaphorical procreation in a homosexual relationship. Other scholars have pointed out that the order in which the sonnets are placed may have been the decision of publishers and not of Shakespeare. This introduces the possibility that Sonnet 18 was originally intended for a woman.
Structure
Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean
sonnetA sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
. It consists of three quatrains followed by a
coupletA couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
, and has the characteristic rhyme scheme:
abab cdcd efef gg. The poem carries the meaning of an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets typically discussed the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but not always. It also contains a
volta, or shift in the poem's subject matter, beginning with the third quatrain.
Syllabic structure of a line of Sonnet 18
| Stress |
x |
/ |
x |
/ |
x |
/ |
x |
/ |
x |
/ |
| Syllable |
Thou |
art |
more |
love- |
ly |
and |
more |
temp- |
pe- |
rate |
Exegesis
"Complexion" in line six, can have two meanings: 1) The outward appearance of the face as compared with the sun ("the eye of heaven") in the previous line, or 2) the older sense of the word in relation to
The four humoursHumorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health...
. In the time of Shakespeare, "complexion" carried both outward and inward meanings, as did the word "temperate" (externally, a weather condition; internally, a balance of humours). The second meaning of "complexion" would communicate that the beloved's inner, cheerful, and temperate disposition is sometimes blotted out like the sun on a cloudy day. The first meaning is more obvious, meaning of a negative change in his outward appearance.
The word, "untrimmed" in line eight, can be taken two ways: First, in the sense of loss of decoration and frills, and second, in the sense of untrimmed sails on a ship. In the first interpretation, the poem reads that beautiful things naturally lose their fanciness over time. In the second, it reads that nature is a ship with sails not adjusted to wind changes in order to correct course. This, in combination with the words "nature's changing course", creates an oxymoron: the unchanging change of nature, or the fact that the only thing that does not change is change. This line in the poem creates a shift from the mutability of the first eight lines, into the eternity of the last six. Both change and eternity are then acknowledged and challenged by the final line.
"Ow'st" in line ten can also carry two meanings equally common at the time: "ownest" and "owest". Many readers interpret it as "ownest", as do many Shakespearean glosses ("owe" in Shakespeare's day, was sometimes used as a synonym for "own"). However, "owest" delivers an interesting view on the text. It conveys the idea that beauty is something borrowed from nature—that it must be paid back as time progresses. In this interpretation, "fair" can be a pun on "fare", or the fare required by nature for life's journey. Other scholars have pointed out that this borrowing and lending theme within the poem is true of both nature and humanity. Summer, for example, is said to have a "lease" with "all too short a date." This monetary theme is common in many of Shakespeare's sonnets, as it was an everyday theme in his budding
capitalisticCapitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
society.
External links