Understanding Sonnet 18

 What is a ‘Sonnet’?

• A poem that has 14 lines.

• Structured as an iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line).

• Three types of sonnets:

• Shakespearean: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme; 3 x 4 lines + 1 rhyming couplet

• Petrarchan: ABBAABBA for 8 lines; different for the last 6 lines

• Spenserian: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE rhyme

What is Sonnet 18 about?

Love and the beauty of his lover. Making his love and the lover’s beauty immortal by writing about it. Summer is used as a motif because it shows joy, warmth, and a time of growth. But the comparison with his lover shows that summer has its downsides, being too unpredictable and extreme. Through this comparison, Shakespeare names the lover as better than summer, less extreme, and eternal (their beauty does not fade because it is memorialized through poetry).

Critical Analysis

The sonnet begins with the famous question: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” This rhetorical question (meaning it does not need an answer or does not expect one) draws in the reader immediately and sets up the comparison that defines the rest of the poem. This question implies admiration even before the comparison properly evolves, as a summer’s day usually represents warmth, beauty and happiness. In the following line, the lyrical voice is answering his own question with the line “Thou art more lovely and more temperate,”. The speaker determines that the beloved is not simply as beautiful as summer, but even better, even more measured, less extreme, more stable.

However, summer has its imperfections, which Shakespeare then starts to enumerate in the second line. "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May," reminds us that summer is not always soft; there are harsh winds which can ruin the budding flowers of beauty in spring. This thought carries on in "And summer's lease hath all too short a date:" Summer is seemingly transient, ethereal, it lasts no moment. These lines highlight the fleeting nature of beauty in the natural world, which the lover is part of, but only partially.

The speaker continues to explain summer's unreliability. "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines," uses metaphor to speak of the sun, suggesting that even the sun is too hot sometimes. This characteristic especially goes into extremes during summer. "And often is his gold complexion dimmed;" adds that the sun's beauty is sometimes dimmed, likely by clouds. Together, these lines suggest that even the best times of summer are not to be trusted because of their inconsistency. After the story of impermanence, Shakespeare continues, "And every fair from fair sometime declines," meaning that everything beautiful would eventually be lost. "By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;" suggests that one could lose one's beauty due to an untimely and unexpected happening or else due to the passage of time, as it is natural. 

The shift in theme, or volta, comes in line nine: "But thy eternal summer shall not fade." In this statement, the speaker staunchly states the loveliness of the beloved as being superior to that of nature and pronounces it timeless and unspotted. "Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;" goes on to inform that the loved one's loveliness won't crumble. Death itself is denied any stake in the beloved in "Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade," for it personifies death and concludes with absolute conviction that the beloved will not walk into its shadow.

This resistance to decline and mortality is addressed in the twelfth line: "When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:" The "eternal lines" are the poem itself, thus immortally is preserving the image of the beloved through the process of writing. The last rhyming couplet ends this argument: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The poet argues that as long as readers are there to read the sonnet, the beloved will live, perpetually preserved in eternity by verse.

Sonnet 18 therefore departs from what appears to be a conventional metaphor towards an inward questioning of the nature of eternity. Shakespeare juxtaposes the transitory beauty of nature's world against the enduring power of artistic success. Using figures of speech like metaphor, personification, and the classical form of the Shakespearean sonnet , made of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, the poem builds an argument that brings it to the point of making a sweeping assertion of the poet's ability to defy time itself. In doing so, Shakespeare indulges his subject and also makes an eternal point about the nature of poetry as a vehicle of memory and beauty.

Resources

Crews, B. (1999). Rewriting/deconstructing Shakespeare: Outlining possibilities, sometimes humourous, for Sonnet 18. Atlantis, 43-57.

Hasan, M., & Fouad, L. (2021). William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” Revisited.”. Cross-Cultural Communication, 17(3), 21-27.

López, M. M. (1997). Teaching Shakespeare's Sonnets: Time as Fracture in Sonnets 18, 60, 73. SEDERI: yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, (7), 287-296.

Shakespeare, W., & Voeten, B. (1911). Sonnet XVIII. Stainer & Bell.

Quackenbush, K. C., Quackenbush, D. A., Epe, P. K. C., & Epe, P. I. T. C. (2019). Stylistics analysis of sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. International Journal of Applied Research, 5(5), 233-237.

Wu, X. A Stylistic Analysis of Foregrounding in Sonnet 18. Science and Education, 4(7), 663-671.