Poetry Analysis Essay On William Shakespeare

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

In the love sonnet titled Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare describes his beloved as a subject of the sonnet to a "summer’s day", in which he finds her to be better than a beautiful day of summer (Shakespeare Line 1). The sonnet contains three quatrains and a couplet. Shakespeare compares the love of his life from being beautiful to a perfect and timeless season and he does so in just fourteen lines. In this sonnet Shakespeare keeps his love alive and uses a variety of techniques to demonstrate how love is more brilliant and everlasting than a summer's day.

In the first quatrain Shakespeare starts off the sonnet with a question, "[s]hall I compare thee to a summer’s day?" getting the reader to think if his beloved is as beautiful as a day of summer (Shakespeare 1). Next Shakespeare moves into the devotion of a comparison between his love and summer in the next eleven lines by answering the following question. Shakespeare says that though summer is perfect, the girl is even more perfect because summer is inconsistent while her beauty is everlasting. The speaker stipulates and admires what is more beautiful, calm and understanding than a summer's day. By thinking what mainly differentiates his beloved from the summer's day is that she being "more lovely and more temperate" (Shakespeare 2). The second quatrain expresses how some days of summer tend to be extreme when they are shaken by the "rough winds" in them (Shakespeare 3). He uses such descriptions to explain why a day of summer cannot be compared to her because of its extreme conditions. The sun is represented as "the eye of heaven" which often shines "too hot" or too dim (Shakespeare 5). Summer then starts to end and it leads to the withering of autumn, as "every fair from fair sometime declines" (Shakespeare 7). The third quatrain tells how his beloved differs from summer in that respect that her "eternal summer shall not fade" and never die which causes a shift and a turn in the sonnet (Shakespeare 9). She is as perfect as a day of the summer yet eternal too and in his eyes she is defined as perfect. Finally in the couplet the speaker explains how the beloved's beauty will preserve as "long as men [...] breathe or eyes can see" and as long as they are alive they will keep reading this sonnet and her beauty will be renewed (Shakespeare 13).

The structure of the English sonnet form is 14 lines, iambic pentameter, and the rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Shakespeare compares his subject's eternal beauty to the brief beauty of nature. The metaphors used compares the speaker’s loves to a summer’s day suggest that while summer is temperamental and fleeting, his beloved’s beauty is not. The imagery of "[r]ough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / [and] summer’s lease hath all too short a date" provide a comparison and contrast to the speaker’s love (Shakespeare 3-4). Summer is short and very unpredictable and the speaker’s love is the opposite. His attitude towards his subject’s beauty is that the subject’s beauty will never fade away like summer. His description of her beauty which "shall not fade" supports his tone of confidence (Shakespeare 9). The mood is hopeful and inspiring as indicated by as "long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / [s]o long lives this, and this gives life to thee" meaning that as long as someone reads this sonnet her beauty will live (Shakespeare 13-14).

The occasion of this theme is trying to keep her beauty alive which is not easy. Everyone knows that life never lasts forever and at one point or another it will come to an end. Throughout the sonnet Shakespeare tries many different ways to compare her to a beautiful day of summer and I believe he succeeds in trying. For example most of the sonnet talks about the person being compared to the different qualities of summer and how summer is inconsistent. But in the end the sonnet talks about how her beauty is different from summer as it will last forever because every time someone is reading this sonnet she is being remembered.

In conclusion I believe Shakespeare has come across with a great point about his love being remembered as long as this sonnet is around. In today’s world I really think the whole idea of love really does not exist. For example a lot of people think they are in love and they do really foolish things. Love, from what I think is a beautiful thing which lasts forever if it is meant to be.

Word Count: 797