SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a

summer's day?
William Shakespeare

Mavi Gelen Sanchez

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born on

April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon.

The son of John Shakespeare and

Mary Arden
Meaning...
Sonnet 18, often alternatively titledShall
I compare thee to a summer's day?, is
one of the best-known of154 sonnets
written by the English playwright and poet
William Shakespeare. Part of the Fair Youth
sequence (which comprisessonnets1126
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 theprocreation sonnets.
Analysis...
Lines 1-2

Shall I compare thee to a summers

day?
Thou art more lovely and more
temperate:

The speaker starts by asking or

wondering out loud whether he ought
to compare whomever hes speaking
to with a summers day.
Lines 3-4

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of

May,
And summers lease hath all too short a date:

Here the speaker begins to personify nature.

In other words, some of the smack talking hes
doing about summer sounds like hes talking
about a person.
Lines 5-6

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmd;

"Complexion" used to be used to describe

someones health, specifically with regard to
their balance of humours. Thus, we see here
again that the speaker is combining
descriptions of external weather phenomena
with internal balance.
Lines 7-8

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or natures changing course
untrimmd;

We might read it as what happens to

"fair" or beautiful things. By that
reading, things that are beautiful
eventually lose their trimmings, or their
decorations, and thus fade from beauty.
Lines 9-10

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst,

These readings both resonate

well with line 4, in which the
speaker described the summer
months as a "lease," or a
temporary ownership that had to
be returned.
Lines 11-12

Nor shall death brag thou wanderst in his

shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growst;

Death, the speaker claims, wont

get a chance to claim the
beloved in the valley of the
shadow of death (this deaths
shadow idea is from Psalm 23:4),
Lines 13-14

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

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

Finally, remember how back in line 1 we

were already wondering if "thee" might
not just be the speakers lover, but also
us readers? Well now the speaker has
broken through the fourth wall, and
revealed himself as not just a lover, but
also as a writer of poetry.
THANK YOU