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Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
William Shakespeare was a well-known playwright and poet of the Elizabethan age. He
was a prolific writer during his life time. He wrote thirty eight plays, two narrative poems and
154 sonnets and his dramas which include histories, tragedies, comedies and pastoral romances.
He wrote poetry in narrative and lyric forms. His famous sonnets, the last of his non-dramatic
works, were published in 1609. There is no unanimous opinion among scholars about the order
or the sequence of these 154 sonnets but evidence suggests that he wrote these sonnets
throughout out his career for a private readership.
A Shakespearean sonnet consists of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter. Every
line contains ten syllables that occur as stressed/unstressed pairs. The first twelve lines, in three
stanzas of four lines each (known as quatrains), follow a pattern where every alternate line
rhymes and the last two lines rhyming together conclude the whole. The rhyme scheme is abab
cdcd efef gg. There are structural variations in a few sonnets. Figurative language is used
throughout the sonnet to give an in-depth view of the speaker’s feelings and love for his beloved.
Metaphor, simile and personification are the main literary devices used in the sonnet 18. The
poet has compared his beloved’s beauty with that of the summer in different ways. He has also
personified objects of nature and death for poetic effect.
The poet begins with an opening question: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
and spends the rest of the poem answering that question. The poem is straightforward in
language and intent. The speaker is in confusion whether he should compare the young man’s
beauty with that of summer or not. And then he drops the idea as he believes that his friend is too
perfect to be compared with the summer. In the next line he emphasizes that his dear friend is
more lovely and temperate than the summer. Whereas the summer is extreme with its harsh days,
his love’s beauty is gentler and more restrained than the summer.
The speaker has personified summer here. He says that the violent summer winds are a
threat to the beautiful new flower buds that popped up in the early summer. He argues that
summer doesn’t last very long; it will end and is only for a short lease. The summer must accept
by the agreements made to the weather. Further explaining, using personification of nature, the
poet says that sometimes the sun (the eye of heaven) is too hot and sometimes too dimmed due to
clouds. So, the poet refers the sun as the “eye of heaven” and the golden face of the sun as “his
gold complexion”. The poet is praising the beauty of his beloved friend indirectly by showing us
the shortcomings of the otherwise-beautiful summer season.
Here the speaker says that everything changes with time. Even the most beautiful things
fade and lose their charm. He says that all the beautiful things will eventually become less
beautiful from the previous state of beauty. This degradation happens by chance or by the rule of
nature which remains unmodified. The poet starts the praise of his beloved without ostentation
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and slowly builds the image of his beloved into that perfect being. His beloved is compared to
summer in the first 8 lines as “more lovely and more temperate” than a summer’s day, but at the
start of the 9th line, his beloved becomes summer as the poet states, “but thy eternal summer shall
not fade.” With the 9th line of a sonnet often being the volta or the “turn” of the poem, this may
be relevant.
Though the beauty of things declines with time, the beauty of youth i.e. his beloved
friend will not degrade. The beloved’s summer, i.e. his happy summer days, is eternal and will
never fade of its charm nor will the beauty of his friend. Death will not be able to boast (brag)
seeing the lover wandering under its shade. The speaker personifies death here. He opines that
although death has always had an upper hand over life, the beauty of his friend will live in his
poem (eternal lines) through eternity. The death will never be able to lay hands on his beloved as
he is immortal.
These two last lines are couplets and Shakespeare explains why the young man is more
long-lasting than the summer. It is for a simple reason. Because for as long as men can breathe,
for as long as people can come to this and read it and the young man is alive in it. This sonnet is
the first in which the poet has mentioned the longevity of youth’s beauty as eternal. Another
important theme here is the power of the speaker’s poem to defy time – the immortality of art.
