Shakespeare sonnet 18 PDF

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sonnet 18...

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Sonnet 18 Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG This is one of the five most famous short poems in the English language. Shakespeare stops trying to persuade the young man to have a child (to reproduce his beauty) and focuses on the beauty itself. All nature is subject to imperfection but the young man’s beauty will not fade.

THE FIRST QUATRAIN Shall I1 / compare / thee2 to / a sum/mer’s day?3 Thou art4 / more love/ly5 and / more tem/perate6: RIP Rough winds / do shake7 / the dar/ling8 buds9 / of May10, RIP And sum/mer’s lease11 / hath all / too short / a date12: RIP Analysis Line 1: Summer’s Day - this term may refer to “the summer season”, “summer time” as opposed to the modern meaning of day. The first line is made to sound conversational and is almost prose. - This contrasts effectively with the three absolutely regular iambic pentameters that follow. The comparison of the beloved to summer is a highly conventional Classical topos - Shakespeare’s originality is in how he develops from this commonplace start.

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shall I compare…? – what if I were to compare…? Hovering accent/level stress in first foot? 2 thee – (2nd person singular object pronoun) you 3 The conceit (or comparison) is explicitly established in the first line. Notice the rhetorical question. 4 thou art – (archaic) you are 5 lovely – (in this case) kind, gentle, (possibly) lovable 6 temperate – even-tempered, gentle, restrained, equitable 7 do shake – shake. This use of ‘do’ to create an unstressed syllable is called ‘expletive’ 8 darling – beautiful, much loved 9 bud – young flower 10 May was considered a summer month then because the calendar was 2 weeks off, so in the 16th Century May lasted from our mid-May to our mid-June. The Darling Buds of May was the title of a comic novel (1958) by H.E. Bates 11 summer’s lease – (legal term) the fixed period of summer. The summer holds a lease on part of the year, but the lease is too short, and has an early termination. John Mortimer used this term for the title of a novel, Summer’s Lease (1988). Notice the personification: only a person can hold a lease. 12 date – (in this case) expiry date, termination

THE SECOND QUATRAIN Sometime13 / too hot / the eye / of hea/ven14 shines, And of/ten is / his gold /comple/xion dimmed15, RIP And e/v’ry fair16 / from fair17 / sometime18 / declines19, IP with medial inversion By chance, / or na/ture’s chan/ging course20 / untrimmed21: RIP Analysis Line 8: The Sailing ship Metaphor Beauty can decline because Nature changes her course without bothering to trim her sails first. In order to change course while sailing, the captain needs to be sure to trim his sail carefully so that the ship does not wander all over or, worse, capsize. The poet indicates that those unhappy and unbeautiful summers can come about either ‘by chance’ or because Nature, for some reason, is not paying attention to her sailing and allows extreme weather to happen. Line 8: Winter is coming All summers come to an end as bad weather inevitably follows good weather. This results in the beauty of verdant abundance being stripped away by winter weather.

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sometime – (in this case) on occasions, sometimes. ‘Sometime’ seems to have stressed the first syllable for instance in sonnet 41 “When I /am some/time ab/sent from / thy heart”, ‘sometime’ would disrupt everything. Similarly, in Sonnet 64, “When some/time lof/ty towers / I see / down-rased”, or 102 “Therefore / like her, / I some/time hold / my tongue”. 14 eye of heaven – sun 15 dimmed – overcast (by clouds). Notice the personification. 16 every fair – (in this case) all beautiful things 17

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the meaning here is complicated by the fact that Shakespeare could pun on fair/fear, which in Early-Modern English were pronounced the same. So, ‘from fair’ could imply “due to fear”.

sometime – (in this case) eventually (false friend), in the end. Notice the wordplay between the two meanings in lines 5 and 7. 19 from fair sometime declines – eventually become inferior in comparison with their essential previous state of beauty (all things decline from a state of perfection) 20 nature’s changing course – a. the fluctuating tides of nature, b. through altering seasons, in unpredictable weather, c. (or possibly) the menstrual cycle 21 untrimmed – a. deprived of its trimming, stripped of beauty/gay apparel; of a tree that has lost its leaves in winter, b. unstable (the ballast of a ship was called ‘trimming’)

THE SEXTET (the final quatrain and the concluding couplet) But22 thy / eter/nal sum/mer23 shall / not fade, Nor lose / posses/sion of / that fair24 / thou ow’st25,26 Nor shall / death brag / thou wan/der’st in /his shade,27 When in / eter/nal lines / to time / thou grow’st28,

IP with substitution IP with substitution IP with in. invers. + substitution RIP assonance

So long / as men / can breathe, / or eyes / can see, So long / lives this, / and this / gives life /to thee.

RIP RIP

Analysis

Line 12: Eternal Lines - These could refer to: a. lines of descendants (his children’s children) b. lines of poetry (the sonnet) c. a grafting conceit ‘To grow to’ is ‘to coalesce’ or ‘become incorporate in’, as a graft coalesces with its parent stock. The youth could be engrafted onto time by the sonnet. One way of allowing certain plants to grow better or last longer is to graft a branch (scion) of the weaker plant onto the roots or main stem (stock) of a much stronger plant, as roses were grafted onto lilac or privet stock. As the critic Stephen Booth indicates, ‘lines’ could also refer to the cords used to fix the scion to the stock or to the threads of life: spun, measured and cut by the Fates. In this way Time is cheated since the stronger stock allows the weaker rose to live much longer than it would naturally; as long as time lasts, the young man will live. The speaker is indicating here that he has grafted the weaker scion of the beloved onto the stronger stock of the poet’s verse, which will allow the beloved to cheat time and be beautiful – and alive – long past the beloved’s natural death. SEMANTIC FIELD: summer, the sun, rejuvenating green nature. Now listen to David Tenant (Dr Who) reading Sonnet 18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6Of-pwKP4 Here’s another reading – this one by Al Pacino: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkjqspfQ0n8

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‘but’ marks the volta ‘eternal summer’ is an oxymoron 24 fair – (in this case) beauty 25 own’st – own, possess 26 (line 10) nor will you lose any of your beauty 27 (line 11) a reference to the Biblical Valley of the Shadow of Death or to Virgil’s description of shades in the Underworld 28 to time thou grow’st – you keep pace with time, you grow as time grows 23...