sonnet 18 by william shakespeare essay

• Ask LitCharts AI
• Discussion Question Generator
• Essay Prompt Generator
• Quiz Question Generator

• Literature Guides
• Poetry Guides
• Shakespeare Translations
• Literary Terms

Sonnet 18 Summary & Analysis by William Shakespeare

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"Sonnet 18" is a sonnet written by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. The poem was likely written in the 1590s, though it was not published until 1609. Like many of Shakespeare's sonnets, the poem wrestles with the nature of beauty and with the capacity of poetry to represent that beauty. Praising an anonymous person (usually believed to be a young man), the poem tries out a number of clichéd metaphors and similes , and finds each of them wanting. It then develops a highly original and unusual simile: the young man's beauty can be best expressed by comparing him to the poem itself.

• Read the full text of “Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

The Full Text of “Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

1 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

4 And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

6 And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,

8 By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

11 Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

13    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

14    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

“Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Summary

“sonnet 18: shall i compare thee to a summer’s day” themes.

Art and Immortality

• See where this theme is active in the poem.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

Lines 13-14

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

“Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Symbols

• See where this symbol appears in the poem.

“Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration.

• See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

End-Stopped Line

Personification, juxtaposition, “sonnet 18: shall i compare thee to a summer’s day” vocabulary.

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Rhyme scheme, “sonnet 18: shall i compare thee to a summer’s day” speaker, “sonnet 18: shall i compare thee to a summer’s day” setting, literary and historical context of “sonnet 18: shall i compare thee to a summer’s day”, more “sonnet 18: shall i compare thee to a summer’s day” resources, external resources.

"Sonnet 18" Read Aloud — Listen to actor David Tenant read "Sonnet 18" aloud.

Image of "Sonnet 18" in its 1609 Printing — An image of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" as it appeared in its first printing.

Close Reading of "Sonnet 18" — Richard Price close reads "Sonnet 18" for the British Library.

David Gilmour Sings "Sonnet 18" — David Gilmour from Pink Floyd performs a musical interpretation of the poem.

"Sonnet 18" Meter — Test your understanding of Shakespeare's meter with this interactive tool from the University of Virginia.

LitCharts on Other Poems by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Sonnet 129: Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time

Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth

Sonnet 141: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes

Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still

Sonnet 19: Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws

Sonnet 20: A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted

Sonnet 27: "Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed"

Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Sonnet 45: The other two, slight air and purging fire

Sonnet 55: Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore

Sonnet 65 ("Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea")

Sonnet 71: No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

• Quizzes, saving guides, requests, plus so much more.

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare Essay

William Shakespeare, the well-known English poet and playwright is famous for his various sonnets, short poems filled with expressive emotions and deep feelings. Overall, Shakespeare has written 154 sonnets which are thought to be created in the period between 1592 and 1598 (Introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets par. 2).This paper is focused on one of the most known sonnets of Shakespeare, the sonnet number 18 which is also known as “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

The main theme reflected in the sonnet number 18 is love. The author expresses his affection to a person he does not name, yet it is suspected that the mysterious object of the poet’s admiration who is mentioned in most of the other sonnets is a young man named William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke (Introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets par. 4). The very first line of the sonnet is a question, the speaker wonders if he could compare his beloved person to a summer day. Generally, this seems to be an appropriate comparison since summer is known to be a beautiful and pleasant time of a year, enjoyed by everyone. Yet, the author has a different opinion, his view of a summer day is unusual. He mentions number of negative qualities a summer day has.

First of all, the speaker states that the summer weather can be quite unpleasant when “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” (3). Secondly, the author notes that summer is rather brief and short-lasting. Thirdly, the poet adds that “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines” (5) meaning that the heat of summer can be simply unbearable and merciless which is definitely a negative characteristic. Finally, the author underlines the imperfection of summer remarking that it is not always bright, and from time to time summer days are cloudy with their “gold complexion dimmed” (6). The speaker lists all of these negative features of summer in order to answer his initial question and confirm his primary statement where he admits that the object of his romantic interest is “more lovely and more temperate” (2) than a summer day.

In the next several lines of the sonnet, the poet reminds the reader that nothing is eternal, and “every fair from fair sometime declines” (7) meaning that even the most exceptional beauty tends to go away after a certain amount of time since this is how our world is – every object and being here goes through stages of birth, blossom, decline and eventual death, obeying the cyclic nature of life.

Yet, having stated that everything sooner or later loses its beauty, the poet emphasizes that his beloved is an exception, because their “eternal summer shall not fade” (9). The poet believes that the person he admires in this sonnet is never going to lose their fair beauty or even be taken away by death. This statement seems rather bold, because it looks like the poet is convinced that the object of his love is going to live forever, which is impossible. The confusion is solved in the end of the poem where the speaker explains his previous words about the eternal life of his beloved specifying that what is going to live forever is their beauty and the memory about this person as it is now imprinted in this sonnet. The poet says: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee” (13-14) meaning that the poem he dedicated to the object of his love will serve as an eternal source of life for them, preserving their beauty and fairness, and passing the memory about them through generations of people.

The last lines of the sonnet can be rather overwhelming for the contemporary reader who is encountering the poem more than 400 years after it was first published. The words of the author who created the poem specifically to preserve the memory about his beloved person turned out to be a prophesy – the sonnet still lives today, and it is still very famous and is read and discussed by thousands of people who pass the memory of the person depicted in this poem through generations.

It seems that Shakespeare has found the formula of eternal life, he use his sonnets as the carriers of messages, feelings, emotions and thoughts that practically served as bottled messages able to travel through an ocean of time and still be able to deliver their contents. The only difference is that those who throw their bottled messages into the sea can only hope that their letters will be found by someone one day, but Shakespeare seems to be very confident about the long lives of his sonnets.

In conclusion, the 18 th sonnet by William Shakespeare is the author’s monologue where he admires his beloved person and states that even a summer day cannot be a fair comparison for them due to their beauty that, unlike a summer day, will live forever carried by the poem as long as the humanity can read it.

Works Cited

Introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets . Shakespeare-online . 2014. Web.

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet XVIII . 2014. Web.

• Events in the 1984 by George Orwell
• Unchecked Ambition in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”
• Idealistic Love in "Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare
• Sexuality in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
• Italian Sonnets: The Structure and Thematic Organization
• Female Character in the Shakespeare’s Othello
• Psychiatric Analysis of Hamlet Literature Analysis
• "Othello" a Play by W. Shakespeare Literature Analysis
• Mary Shelley's Monster in Frankenstein Literature Analysis
• Mary Shelley’s Fears in "Frankenstein"
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, April 7). Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sonnet-18-by-william-shakespeare/

"Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare." IvyPanda , 7 Apr. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/sonnet-18-by-william-shakespeare/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare'. 7 April.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare." April 7, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sonnet-18-by-william-shakespeare/.

1. IvyPanda . "Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare." April 7, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sonnet-18-by-william-shakespeare/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare." April 7, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sonnet-18-by-william-shakespeare/.

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

A Summary and Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ is one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature. In this post, we’re going to look beyond that opening line, and the poem’s reputation, and attempt a short summary and analysis of Sonnet 18 in terms of its language, meaning, and themes. The poem represents a bold and decisive step forward in the sequence of Sonnets as we read them.

For the first time, the key to the Fair Youth’s immortality lies not in procreation (as it had been in the previous 17 sonnets) but in Shakespeare’s own verse. But what is William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 actually saying? And did the poet have personal experience of the young man to whom the sonnet is addressed, or is the poem a mere product of the imagination, a fine conceit?

Most of the poems we write about here on Interesting Literature involve introducing the unfamiliar: we take a poem that we think has something curious and little-known about it, and try to highlight that feature, or interpretation.

But with ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ we have almost the opposite problem: we’re trying to take a very well-known poem and de -familiarise it, and try to see it as though we’re coming across it for the first time. This is by no means an easy task, so we’ll begin with a summary.

Sonnet 18: summary

First, then, that summary of Sonnet 18, beginning with that opening question, which sounds almost like a dare or a challenge, nonchalantly offered up: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Shakespeare asks the addressee of the sonnet – who is probably the same young man, or ‘Fair Youth’, to whom the other early sonnets are also addressed – whether he should compare him to a summery day. He goes on to remark that the young man is lovelier, and more gentle and dependably constant.

After all, in May (which, in Shakespeare’s time, was considered a bona fide part of summer ) rough winds often shake the beloved flowers of the season (thus proving the Bard’s point that summer is less ‘temperate’ than the young man).

What’s more, summer is over all too quickly: its ‘lease’ – a legal term – soon runs out. We all know this to be true, when September rolls round, the nights start drawing in, and we get that sinking ‘back to school’ feeling.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:

In lines 5-8, Shakespeare continues his analysis of the ways in which the young man is better than a summer’s day: sometimes the sun (‘the eye of heaven’) shines too brightly (i.e. the weather is just too hot, unbearably so), and, conversely, sometimes the sun is ‘dimmed’ or hidden by clouds.

And every lovely or beautiful thing (‘fair’ here in ‘every fair’ is used as a noun, i.e. ‘every fair thing’), even the summer, sometimes drops a little below its best, either randomly or through the march of nature (which changes and in time ages every living thing).

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st

In lines 9-12, Shakespeare continues the ‘Youth vs. summer’ motif, arguing that the young man’s ‘eternal summer’, or prime, will not fade; nor will the Youth’s ‘eternal summer’ lose its hold on the beauty the young man owns (‘ow’st’).

Nor will Death, the Grim Reaper, be able to boast that the young man walks in the shadow of death, not when the youth grows, not towards death (like a growing or lengthening shadow) but towards immortality, thanks to the ‘eternal lines’ of Shakespeare’s verse which will guarantee that he will live forever.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

In his concluding couplet, Shakespeare states that as long as the human race continues to exist, and read poetry, Shakespeare’s poem (‘this’) survives, and continues to ‘give life’ to the young man through keeping his memory alive.

Sonnet 18: analysis

Sonnet 18 is a curious poem to analyse when it’s set in the context of the previous sonnets. It’s the first poem that doesn’t exhort the Fair Youth to marry and have children: we’ve left the ‘Procreation Sonnets’ behind.

In the last few sonnets, Shakespeare has begun to introduce the idea that his poetry might provide an alternative ‘immortality’ for the young man, though in those earlier sonnets Shakespeare’s verse has been deemed an inferior way of securing the young man’s immortality when placed next to the idea of leaving offspring.

In Sonnet 18, right from the confident strut of ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ onwards, Shakespeare is sure that his poetry will guarantee the young man his immortality after all.

There is an easy music to the poem, set up by that opening line: look at repetition of ‘summer’ and ‘some’, which strikes us as natural and not contrived, unlike some of the effects Shakespeare had created in the earlier sonnets: ‘summer’s day’, ‘summer’s lease’, ‘Sometime too hot’, ‘sometime declines’, ‘eternal summer’.

This reinforces the inferiority of the summer with its changeability but also its brevity (‘sometime’ in Shakespeare’s time meant not only ‘sometimes’, suggesting variability and inconstancy, but also ‘once’ or ‘formerly’, suggesting something that is over).

In terms of imagery, the reference to Death bragging ‘thou wander’st in his shade’, as well as calling up the words from the 23rd Psalm (‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death’), also fits neatly into the poem’s broader use of summer/sun imagery.

‘When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st’: it’s worth observing the suggestion of self-referentiality here, with ‘lines’ summoning the lines of Shakespeare’s verse. In such an analysis, then, ‘eternal lines’ prefigure Shakespeare’s own immortal lines of poetry, designed to give immortality to the poem’s addressee, the Fair Youth.

This is significant, following Booth, if we wish to analysis Sonnet 18 (or ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ if you’d prefer) in the context of the preceding sonnets, which had been concerned with procreation.

We cannot be sure who arranged the sonnets into the order in which they were printed in 1609 (in the first full printing of the poems, featuring that enigmatic dedication to ‘Mr W. H. ’), but it is suggestive that Sonnet 18, in which Shakespeare proudly announces his intention of immortalising the Fair Youth with his pen, follows a series of sonnets in which Shakespeare’s pen had urged the Fair Youth to marry and sire offspring as his one chance of immortality.

Now, through the power of his poetry, William Shakespeare the writer is offering the young man another way of becoming immortal.

Sonnet 18 has undoubtedly become a favourite love poem in the language because its message and meaning are relatively easy to decipher and analyse.

Its opening line has perhaps eclipsed the rest of the poem to the degree that we have lost sight of the precise argument Shakespeare is making in seeking to compare the Youth to a summer’s day, as well as the broader context of the rest of the Sonnets and the implications this has for our interpretation of Sonnet 18.

The poem reveals a new confidence in Shakespeare’s approach to the Sonnets, and in the ensuing sonnets he will take this even further.

Continue your exploration of Shakespeare’s Sonnets with our summary and analysis of Sonnet 19  – or, if you’d prefer, skip ahead to the more famous Sonnet 20 or even the much-quoted Sonnet 116 . Alternatively, discover some curious facts behind some of Shakespeare’s greatest plays , our list of misconceptions about Shakespeare’s life , or check out our top tips for essay-writing .

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Type your email…

8 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18”

My freshmen and sophomores freak when I reveal that Shakespeare wrote this to a young man. They settle down once I explain how “the fair youth” probably sponsored Shakespeare and in return he paid tribute to his patron.

I think we can safely conclude Shakespeare was well aware of his own outstanding genius from the last couplet.

Reblogged this on MorgEn Bailey – Creative Writing Guru and commented: As much of England is covered in frost, I thought I’d share with you something of a warmer nature…

Have you done sonnet 129? Quite stark in its dissection of self-centred love (lust).

• Pingback: A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ — Interesting Literature | Phil Slattery Art

The very strange Dedication to the sonnets is signed TT and the first letter of the first 5 lines spells TTMAP (i.e. it is an acrostic – very popular at the the time). We believe the Dedication is a “map” of the sonnets. When the dedication is laid out in a grid acrostic words are formed which “map” to Sonnet numbers. Sonnet 18 (the Summer sonnet) maps to L’Ete – the French word for Summer. https://leanpub.com/themap

• Pingback: 10 Classic Summer Poems Everyone Should Read | Interesting Literature
• Pingback: A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12: ‘When I do count the clock’ | Interesting Literature

Comments are closed.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

(92) 336 3216666

[email protected]

Read below our complete notes on the poem Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) by William Shakespeare. Our notes cover Sonnet 18 summary, themes, and literary analysis.

Introduction

William Shakespeare was one of the most prominent playwrights and poets of the sixteenth century. He wrote many famous plays and sonnets. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is one of his most beautiful pieces of poetry. This sonnet is also referred to as “Sonnet 18.” It was written in the 1590s and was published in his collection of sonnets in 1609. In this collection, there are a total of 154 sonnets. These themes of these sonnets are usually love, beauty, time, and jealousy to mortality and infidelity.

This collection of sonnets is believed to be addressed to two different persons. On this basis, these sonnets are divided into two portions. The first portion consists of the first 126 sonnets. These sonnets are addressed to a male beloved. Some of these sonnets directly persuade the guy to marry while the rest addresses general themes like mortality, the value of poetry, and the attainment of immortality. The next portion consists of twenty-eight sonnets. These sonnets are addressed to some mysterious lady. The lady is usually referred to as the “dark lady.” These sonnets address the themes of greed, appetite, and sexual desires.

This sonnet belongs to the first part of the sonnet collection and is, therefore, considered to be addressed to the beloved male. This context specifies that the speaker is praising the beauty of a guy and comparing his beauty to the pleasant aspects of summer. The speaker tells him that there are a few downsides to the beauty of summer, but his beauty is flawless. Moreover, every beautiful thing is doomed to fade except the speaker’s beloved. The reason is that he is going to immortalize his beauty by describing it in his poetry. 

As the number of this sonnet is eighteenth, it is clear that it discusses the themes of mortality, the value of poetry, and the attainment of immortality. The speaker reflects on how every worldly entity is mortal. However, he is going to use his poetry against this enemy and win immortality for his beloved by canonizing him in his poetry. 

Literary Context

The wave of writing poetry in sonnet form reached England in the sixteenth century from Italy. Petrarch, an Italian poet and a philosopher, introduced this form for the first time in the fourteenth century in Italy. It was the time of renaissance in Italy. When the renaissance reached England in its real sense in the sixteenth century, sonnet form also came along.

Thomas Wyatt was the first English poet to introduce it to the English audience. Many other poets like Sidney and Henry Howard followed the same pattern and anglicized it by introducing quatrains in it. This sonnet confirms this tradition of the English sonnet form. It is written in the form of quatrains and is composed of fourteen lines. The first thirteen lines are divided into three quatrains, and the last two lines make a couplet. 

Just like other sonnets of Shakespeare, this sonnet also deviates from the traditional sonnet form in regard to its theme. It does not, like the traditional sonnets, narrate the pursuit of a god-like female beloved. On the contrary, it describes the beauty of a male beloved and celebrates poetry as a source of achieving immortality.

Sonnet 18 Summary

First quatrain.

The poem opens with a question asked by the speaker. The speaker asks the beloved whether he should compare him to a summer day. The next line announces the comparison and says that the beloved is lovelier than a summer day. Moreover, the summer day is extreme, while the beloved is better because he is temperate. The speaker furthers this comparison and says that the darling buds sprouting in May are shaken by the forceful winds that blow in the summer. Furthermore, the lease of summer is also not very long. It is very short-lived.    

Second Quatrain

The next quatrain opens with the description of yet another flaw in summer’s beauty. During summers, the sun shines very brightly, and it is very hot. The pleasant weather does not stay. Similarly, the sunshine is sometimes very faint, and the weather gets cold.

Having described the numerous flaws in the summer’s beauty, the speaker reflects on the nature of beauty in general. He says that every beautiful thing is destined to see a decline in its charm one day. The reason for this decline may vary, but the decline is guaranteed. Sometimes, it is the bearing of luck and chance, which results in the fading of prettiness. Other times, it is the working of time and nature, which brings old age. This way, no beautiful thing escapes the clutches of future decline.  

Third Quatrain

The first line of the third quatrain directly addresses the beloved and tells him that his beauty is eternal. It will never fade. The speaker tells him that you should not be afraid of losing the charm that you have now. Time will never be able to take it from you. Similarly, death will also fail in dispossessing him of his beauty. The shadows of death will never be able to take him under their control. The speaker says that you will keep on growing in the eternal lines he is saying. These lines do not come under the influence of time and will be able to remain in world till the end of time.

The last two lines of the sonnet describe the reason behind the immortality of the beloved’s beauty. The speaker says that as long as the human race remains here in this world, his lines will be read. With the reading of these lines, the beauty of the beloved described in these lines will remain in this world. This way, the speaker claims that he has given immortality to the beauty of the beloved.

Themes in Sonnet 18

Throughout the whole poem, the speaker talks about the beauty of his beloved. He admires the beauty of his beloved in different ways throughout the three quatrains. He starts by asking his beloved whether he should compare him with a summer day or not.

The comparison starts from the very next line, where the speaker mentions the limitation of summer in comparison to his beloved. He says that a summer day is either too cold or too hot, depending on the sunshine. On the other hand, his beloved is temperate and does not go to extremes. The speaker also claims that his beloved is lovelier than a summer day.

The speaker furthers his admiration by juxtaposing his beloved’s beauty with the beauty of other mortal things. He says that summer is too short and fades away into autumn. Similarly, all the other things in the world are going to lose their charm. They are either going to face some accident or fall into the arms of the inevitable death.

This admiration of the beloved’s beauty is enhanced in the poem by the use of superior metaphors. The speaker uses metaphor like “eye of heaven” in comparison with his beloved beauty to show that his beloved’s beauty is not an ordinary thing.

Cruelty of Nature

Nature is depicted as a harsh and cruel antagonist in this poem. The speaker says that the harsh winds shake the darling buds during May. This depicts that elements of nature are always bent upon damaging the beautiful objects in the world. Moreover, the two extremes of sunshine during summer deprive the humans of the pleasant weather. It is the working of the cruel nature that does not let humans have fun in this world.

Similarly, the speaker mentions how every fair thing is destined to lose its fairness in its interaction with natural cycles. Nature is filled with such dangers that can snatch the beauty of anything at any time.

Furthermore, death is depicted as a boastful antagonist in the poem. It is one of the agents of cruel nature that puts an end to the beauty of many things. It does not let humans enjoy their life and snatches it from them.

Inevitability of Death

The poem highlights the idea that no one can escape death. Everyone, no matter how powerful they are, is going to fall into this pit called grave. This idea is first developed in the poem by the description of the short-lived summer. The speaker says that summer has a very short span of time and will soon end. 

This idea is then developed, and the speaker maintains that death serves as the full stop for every entity in the world. Every beautiful thing ceases to exist and turns into dust once the time of death arrives. The speaker, however, promises his beloved to protect him from such a future by immortalizing him in his poetry.

Poetry as a Source of Immortality

In the last couplet of the poem, the speaker tells his beloved about his source of achieving immortality. He tells him that he has immortalized him by writing about his beauty in his poetry. He is sure that people will read his poetry even when they are long gone from this world. When they read his poetry, they will appreciate his beloved’s beauty. In this way, his beloved will remain immortal.

Sonnet 18 Literary Analysis

The poem starts with a rhetorical question that emphasizes the worth of the beloved’s beauty. This question plays the role of informing the reader about the ensuing comparison in the rest of the poem. The speaker talks to his beloved as if his beloved is standing in front of him. This conversational style makes the message of the poem easy to grasp. It also makes it very attractive for the readers.

The second line continues with the same conversational tone. However, this time the speaker is not asking a question. Instead, he is describing the differences between his beloved and summer. He claims that his beloved is lovelier than summer. Also, he is more temperate than summer. This comparison forms the mental image of the speaker’s beloved in the mind of the reader. The effect of this image is of awe and admiration. The reader cannot help but admire the marvelous beauty of the speaker’s beloved.

The next line continues the same comparison. The speaker describes how his beloved is more temperate than summer by describing the roughness of summer. He says that the strong winds in summer shake the newly-sprouted buds on trees. Here, the epithet “darling” is used with the word “buds” to maintain the atmosphere of romance and flattery in the poem.

The last line of the quatrain describes another flaw of the summer season. The speaker says that the summer season is short-lived and is destined to fade into the clutches of the cruel autumn. He uses the phrase “all too short a date” to describe the shortness of the summer season. The use of two quantifiers before the word short emphasizes the speaker’s claim.

The next quatrain brings a few more flaws in the summer season. The speaker is weary of the two extremes of sunshine during the summer season. He uses the metaphor “the eye of heaven” to describe the sun. This use of metaphor is intended to further elevate the status of the speaker’s beloved by showing that he is even better than heavenly entities. The speaker says that the sun shines too brightly at times during the summer season.  It makes the pleasant weather a bit too hot to bear.

Similarly, the speaker claims, sometimes the sunshine is too dull, and the weather becomes cold. Here, the speaker uses the metaphor “his gold complexion” to refer to sunshine. This metaphor creates the image of a beautiful person with golden complexion being compared with the golden rays of the sun in the minds of the readers.

The remaining two lines of the quatrain address the problem of mortality. The speaker says that every beautiful thing is doomed to lose its beauty at some point in time. It can happen to a person or a thing through a stroke of luck. The person or thing might face an accident that will take away all its beauty. Moreover, the inevitable death is also waiting for every entity and will prove to be the ultimate end of every type of beauty.

 In the third quatrain, the speaker tells his beloved that he should not be afraid of these things. He uses the phrase “thy eternal summer” to refer to his beloved’s beauty. This metaphor serves the purpose of maintaining the image of the comparison of the summer season and the speaker’s beloved, which started in the first line. The second line continues the same thought, and the speaker tells his beloved that he should not be afraid of losing his charm. His charm will stay eternally. 

In the third line of the quatrain, the speaker makes another promise with his beloved. He tells him that he should not be afraid of death. Here, death is personified and is given the human quality of bragging. The personified image of death creates the image of a boastful enemy, which is trying to bring everything under its shadows. In this way, it is portrayed as a true antagonist. The speaker tells his beloved that this antagonist will never be able to cast his shadow over him.

In the last line of the quatrain, the speaker reassures his beloved that he will go on to grow in the lines created by him. These lines will go on parallel with time and will never face death.

The last two lines of the sonnet make a couplet where the speaker talks of his arsenal in his fight against mortality and death. He says that as long as human life exists on this earth, his lines will be read. He uses the phrase “men can breathe, or eyes can see” to refer to human life on earth. Such an elaborated reference emphasizes that even when a single aspect of human life is here on earth, the speaker’s words will live. He furthers his claim by saying that the immortality of his poetry will give immortality to his beloved.

The poem is written in the form of a sonnet. It has fourteen lines, which are divided into three quatrains and a couplet. The first eight lines—the octave—discuss the same thought i.e., the comparison of the speaker’s beloved with summer. The last six lines—the sestet—bring in a new thought. These lines describe how the speaker’s beloved is unlike the summer.

Rhyme Scheme

The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is ababcdcdefefgg.

The words used in the sonnet are straightforward and ordinary.

The tone of the sonnet is romantic and full of flattery. The speaker speaks of his beloved beauty as there is no match for it.

The speaker of the sonnet is a person who has a lot of experience in love. He/she is very vocal about how everything is lesser in stature than his/her beloved beauty. He/she also talks about using his/her poetry to immortalize his/her beloved. This shows that he/she is a poet.

Literary Devices

Rhetorical question.

The very first line of the poem is a rhetorical question. The speaker asks his/her beloved whether he/she should compare him to a summer day. This question sets the tone and atmosphere for the rest of the discourse. It creates the air of magnificence around the personality of the speaker’s beloved.

Personification

In line number nine, death is attributed with the human quality of boasting. The personified image of death creates the image of a boastful enemy, which is trying to bring everything under its shadows. In this way, it is portrayed as a true antagonist.  

•         In the fifth line of the poem, the sun is described as “the eye of heaven.” Here, the sun is compared with an eye, which creates the effect of vividness. It provides the reader with a mental image of the whole scenario.
•         In the sixth line of the poem, the metaphor “his gold complexion” is used to refer to sunshine. This metaphor creates the image of a beautiful person with golden complexion being compared with the golden rays of the sun in the minds of the readers.
•         The metaphor “thy eternal summer” is used to refer to the beloved’s beauty. This metaphor serves the purpose of maintaining the image of the comparison of the summer season and the speaker’s beloved, which started in the first line.

More From William Shakespeare

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• The Merchant of Venice
• Twelfth Night
• The Taming of the Shrew
• As You Like It
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Comedy of Errors