SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY[SONNET NO
-18]-----------------BY William Shakespeare.
 |
| William Shakespeare |
⧭⧭In the sonnet no
18,Shakespeare wants to create a dimension where a youth will remain immortal.
Here he dedicates his feelings to one Mr. W.H.who has been variously identified
by many critics as the Earl of Pembroke,or the earl of Southampton etc.Sonnet
no 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet having 14 lines of iambic
pentameter,three quatrains and a concluding couplet.It has an intricate rhyme
scheme which is ABAB,CDCD,EFEF,GG.The poem reflects tradition of the Italian or
Petrarchan sonnet.Typically it discusses the beauty of a youth and its
eternalization.
Q1 ‘’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;
Q2 Sometimes too hot the eye of
heaven shines,
And
often is his gold complexion dimed;
And
every fair from fair sometimes declines,
Q3
By chance,or nature’s changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st
Nor
shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When
in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
C So long as
men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So
long lives this,and this gives life to thee.’’
------------William Shakespeare.
⧭⧭The poet begins with a
rhetorical question,“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” to compare the
beauty of youth with summer’s day. He feels that the youth is more lovely and
temperate than a summer'day.He asserts that rough and violent winds come in summer
and disturb the darling flowers of May.Summer's beauty is inconstant as the sun
sometimes is too hot or sometimes dimmed by clouds and on overcast days
generally. summer holds a lease on part of a year,but the lease is too short to
enjoy and has an early end. Here Shakespeare chooses summer to stand for youth
and beauty, because summer is the season of full and fruitful bloom but it
doesn’t last for long .At the same time, it promises to come again. But to the
poet,his friend’s beauty is constant and eternal. Thus Shakespeare underlines
the theme of love and time .Moreover, man's spiritual renewal constitutes the
theme of this sonnet. The poet talks about the immortality of beauty.He
indicates a way to preserve the beauty of his friend against the constant
change of time. The sonnet ends in a defiant couplet where the poet says as
long as the word exists, his poetry will survive and enliven the youth. The
youth will be immortalized through the power his verse. For everything that
loses its beauty at one time by chance or naturally due to the age, but the
youth’s beauty will not be withered and remain as long as man lives. Thus the
poet tries to externalize the charming beauty of his friend through the
immortal lines of the poem .
Post a Comment