Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day Art

Sonnet by William Shakespeare

Poem by William Shakespeare

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Sonnet eighteen in the 1609 Quarto of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Q1 Q2 Q3 C Shall I compare thee to a summertime'south day? Thou art more lovely and more than temperate: Rough winds practise milkshake the darling buds of May, And summer'southward charter hath all too brusk a appointment: Sometime too hot the center of sky shines, And often is his aureate complexion dimmed; And every off-white from fair onetime declines, By chance, or nature's irresolute course, untrimmed: But thy eternal summertime shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Expiry brag thou wander'st in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men tin breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.[ane] 4 8 12 fourteen —William Shakespeare

"Sonnet 18" is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written past the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.

In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the young man to a summer's mean solar day, but notes that the young homo has qualities that surpass a summer's day. He also notes the qualities of a summer day are subject to change and will eventually diminish. The speaker then states that the immature man will live forever in the lines of the verse form, every bit long as it can be read.^[ii] There is an irony being expressed in this sonnet: it is non the actual immature human who will be eternalized, but the description of him contained in the poem, and the poem contains scant or no description of the immature man, but instead contains vivid and lasting descriptions of a summertime twenty-four hour period, which the young human is supposed to outlive.^[3]

Structure [edit]

Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter: three quatrains followed past a couplet. Information technology also has the feature rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The poem reflects the rhetorical tradition of an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets typically discussed the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but not ever.^[4] It besides contains a volta, or shift in the poem's subject matter, beginning with the third quatrain.^[v]

The couplet'southward first line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter rhythm:

          ×  /   ×   /   ×    /     ×  /     ×   /  And then long as men can breathe or optics can run into, (18.13)        

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

Context [edit]

The poem is office 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 get-go of the cycle later the opening sequence now described as the procreation sonnets. Some scholars, however, contend that information technology is part of the procreation sonnets, equally it addresses the idea of reaching eternal life through the written word, a theme they observe in sonnets 15–17. In this view, it can exist seen as part of a transition to sonnet 20's time theme.^[6]

Notes on the text [edit]

"Complexion" in line half dozen, tin have ii meanings:

• (1)The outward appearance of the face every bit compared with the sunday ("the centre of heaven") in the previous line, or
• (two)The older sense of the word in relation to the 4 humours.

In Shakespeare'due south time "complexion" carried both outward and inwards meanings, every bit did the word "temperate" (externally, a weather condition condition; internally, a balance of humours). The second pregnant of "complexion" would communicate that the dear'south inner, cheerful, and temperate disposition is abiding, unlike the sun, which may be blotted out on a cloudy day. The first significant is more than obvious: a negative change in his outward advent.^[vii]

The discussion, "untrimmed" in line eight, tin 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 send. In the get-go interpretation, the poem reads that beautiful things naturally lose their fanciness over fourth dimension. In the 2d, information technology reads that nature is a ship with sails not adjusted to air current changes in club to correct class. This, in combination with the words "nature's changing form", creates an oxymoron: the unchanging alter of nature, or the fact that the only thing that does not change is change. This line in the verse form creates a shift from the mutability of the starting time 8 lines, into the eternity of the last six. Both change and eternity are then acknowledged and challenged by the final line.^[4]

"Ow'st" in line x can conduct two meanings, each common at the time: "ownest" and "owest". "Owe", in Shakespeare's 24-hour interval, was sometimes used as a synonym for "ain". However, "owest" conveys the thought that beauty is something borrowed from nature—that it must be paid back. In this interpretation, "fair" tin can exist a pun on "fare", or the fare required by nature for life's journey.^[8] Other scholars have pointed out that this borrowing and lending theme inside the poem is truthful of both nature and humanity. Summer, for case, 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 capitalistic society.^[9]

Recordings [edit]

• Paul Kelly, for the 2016 album, Seven Sonnets & a Song
• Chuck Liddell Video on YouTube
• David Gilmour
• Bryan Ferry, for the 1997 anthology Diana, Princess of Wales: Tribute

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Shakespeare, William. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Bloomsbury Arden 2010. ISBN 9781408017975. p. 147
2. ^ Shakespeare, William. Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare'due south Sonnets. Bloomsbury Arden 2010. ISBN 9781408017975. p. 146
3. ^ Hammond. The Reader and the Fellow Sonnets. Barnes & Noble. 1981. p. 27. ISBN 978-one-349-05443-5
4. ^ ^{a b} Jungman, Robert E. (January 2003). "Trimming Shakespeare's Sonnet 18". ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews. ANQ. 16 (ane): 18–nineteen. doi:10.1080/08957690309598181. ISSN 0895-769X. S2CID 161655449.
5. ^ Preminger, Alex and T. Brogan. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. pg. 894 ISBN 0-691-02123-six
6. ^ Shakespeare, William et al. The Sonnets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pg. 130 ISBN 0-521-29403-7
7. ^ Ray, Robert H. (October 1994). "Shakespeare'southward Sonnet eighteen". The Explicator. 53 (1): 10–xi. doi:10.1080/00144940.1994.9938800. ISSN 0014-4940.
8. ^ Howell, Mark (April 1982). "Shakespeare's Sonnet 18". The Explicator. xl (three): 12. doi:10.1080/00144940.1982.11483535. ISSN 0014-4940.
9. ^ Thurman, Christopher (May 2007). "Love's Usury, Poet'southward Debt: Borrowing and Mimesis in Shakespeare's Sonnets". Literature Compass. 4 (3): 809–819. doi:10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00433.x.

References [edit]

• Baldwin, T. West. (1950). On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare'southward Sonnets. University of Illinois Printing, Urbana.
• Hubler, Edward (1952). The Sense of Shakespeare'due south Sonnets. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
• Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge Academy Printing, Cambridge.

First edition and facsimile

• Shakespeare, William (1609). Milkshake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
• Lee, Sidney, ed. (1905). Shakespeares Sonnets: Being a reproduction in facsimile of the outset edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 458829162.

Variorum editions

• Alden, Raymond Macdonald, ed. (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. OCLC 234756.
• Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [ii Volumes]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. OCLC 6028485.

Mod critical editions

• Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare'south Sonnets: With Iii Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN978-0-8386-4163-vii. OCLC 86090499.
• Booth, Stephen, ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene. ISBN0-300-01959-9. OCLC 2968040.
• Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Consummate Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Printing. ISBN978-0192819338. OCLC 48532938.
• Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare, Tertiary Serial (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC 755065951.
• Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Printing. ISBN978-0521294034. OCLC 32272082.
• Kerrigan, John, ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN0-fourteen-070732-viii. OCLC 15018446.
• Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare'south Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN978-0743273282. OCLC 64594469.
• Orgel, Stephen, ed. (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN978-0140714531. OCLC 46683809.
• Vendler, Helen, ed. (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN0-674-63712-7. OCLC 36806589.

External links [edit]

• Works related to Sonnet 18 (Shakespeare) at Wikisource
• Paraphrase and analysis (Shakespeare-online)
• David Gilmour'due south recording of Sonnet 18 on YouTube
• Poeterra's recording of Sonnet eighteen

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_18

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