Shakespeare Sonnet No.18

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day

Jul 16, 2007 Jem Bloomfield

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is a clever piece of rhetoric - a love poem about the consequences of writing love poetry.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The first line of this sonnet has become something of a cliché, and hearing it on its own you would expect a flowery series of compliments on the beloved’s beauty – lots of pastoral imagery and sighing in sunny meadows. Hair compared to the smell of new-mown grass, cheeks to the softness of a ripe peach, eyes to the sun; the whole bag of sonneteering comparisons. In fact, the poem says practically nothing in description either of a summer’s day, or the specific lover being addressed. It is a love poem about the act of writing love poetry.

Having made the suggestion of a comparison in the first line, Shakespeare goes on to say that “Thou art more lovely and more temperate”, but goes on to point out the transient and changing nature of summer – the shortness of the season, the fickleness of the sun’s rays. He draws a general principle from this, that “Every fair from fair sometimes declines”, in other words that beauty doesn’t last in this world. To expand the line; everything which is fair eventually loses whatever makes it fair, through the passage of time.

Surprisingly, this is contrasted to the beauty of the beloved – “thy eternal summer shall not fade”. Having already established that earthly beauty declines (as Shakespeare says elsewhere, “rose lips and cheeks/ Within [Time’s] curving sickle’s compass come”) this is an unexpected claim. He specifically states that the lover shall not “lose possession of that fair”, unlike the “fair” mentioned before. Unless the beloved is immortal, this is going to take some explaining.

Shakespeare’s answer lies not in the beauty of the beloved, but what he himself is doing with it; “in eternal lines to time thou growest.” In an astonishing brag, Shakespeare puts his poem on a part with immortality, and declares that “as long as men can breathe, or eyes can see/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

This is a very clever rhetorical trick – having asked “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”, it is the very act of comparison which raises the beloved above the transient level of a beautiful summer day. It’s also noticeable that, apart from the vague adjective “lovely” in line two, there is very little about the beloved in the poem, though that’s the supposed subject. The clichéd romantic way in which we tend to hear the first line is a mistake – at the end we realise that the stress isn’t upon “thee”, but upon “compare”. Modest it isn’t, but there’s a difficulty in convicting Shakespeare of hubris for the last lines. After all, we are still reading the poem and talking about it. He may have had a point.

The copyright of the article Shakespeare Sonnet No.18 in Poetry is owned by Jem Bloomfield. Permission to republish Shakespeare Sonnet No.18 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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Aug 20, 2008 1:53 PM
Guest :
you are assuming that the beloved is a woman that is why things wouldn't tie up together. but as stated elsewhere, shakespeare was ruing that the Rival Poet / Fair Youth is a man. that means to say, writing about his beloved would have been easier if only she is a woman.

the key to understanding the sonnets, especially those from 1-126, is to read francis bacon's account of a celestial visitation when he was a young lad of 13. the celestial visitors told him that he wouldn't be able to fulfill his dreams but he should nonetheless continue nursing them and writing about them because someday, in the distant future in a distant land, somebody who would claim to be his pupil will piece together his writings and fulfill his dreams. that pupil would be like a flute in his hand.

that should explain why shakespeare was so obsessed with his beloved pupil. for only through that pupil could his dreams of "Great Instauration" could be fulfilled. the pupil would feel the same need for his teacher because only through the guidance and assistance of his teacher would he be able to fulfill his own dreams and aspirations.
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