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Angelica Fuentes

Professor Batty

English 102

20 September 2017

Beauty Within

In William Shakespeare's sonnet Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day ?, he

emphasized his lovers beauty with the way he compares, contrasts, and talks about her flaws.

Shakespeare begins admiring his friend without noticing and so he slowly creates a perfect image

of her. The poet tends to hold the purest art throughout the poem that honors the people. In this

poem, time and death tends to damage her beauty physically, but does not destroy her

completely.

Shakespeare is well known for his metaphors, such as Shall I compare thee to a

summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. (1-2) The poem starts off as a

question thats only answer is yes, yet he refuses to answer the question and begins to explain

why. He compares the object of his description as more lovely and more temperate than a

summers day. Lovely means easy and sweet, but temperate is controllable and can not be

overcome by passion. Although, temperate has a double meaning of being mild temperate and

balancing, which is how Shakespeare uses it.

Thoughts of an eternal life throughout the poem influence this sonnet. Her eternal

summer would outlast all summers in the future. In the line that reads Rough winds do shake

the darling buds of May, And summers lease hath all too short a date, (3-4) the poet begins to

use personification in the m nature. The poet is saying summer isn't always a desire, but just

bitter and inhuman days making summer seem too short. The way he describes short summer
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was as if summer was an agreement with the weather and would end, but summer in reality is

just one of the four seasons throughout the year.

Throughout the poem Shakespeare seems to describe summer individually with different

kind of metaphors. For example, Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his

gold...;(5-8) is probably the most important personification that this poem contains. The eye of

heaven refers to the sun as if the sun is too hot, strong, and unpredictable but the beauty in itself

is on a whole different level that can not be compared. However, within the lines the poet is

saying that everything beautiful will eventually fade and come to an end due to the sake of

nature. Shakespeare ends in conclusion that nature is part of the world and in fact a beautiful

thing that everyone should accept.

Although, lines 9 through 12 the poet creates a deeper tone and feeling that is portrayed

with foreshadow creating a dramatic scene. But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose

possession of that fair thou owst, (9-10) meaning that summer and the limitations of nature will

go away but will remain within just like her beauty. Eventually the poet introduces death and

how it damages her beauty but does not take it away completely. For example, Nor shall death

brag thou wanders in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growst;, (11-12) shows an

example how metaphorically that shade isnt the darkness but shadow of death as it is described

in the bible's 23rd Psalm. The poet states that they both will remain living in their heart and he

gives life to her throughout the poem, and claims she will remain immortal.

Lastly, the poem ends with a twist when the speaker begins to praise his beloved. In the

last two lines, Shakespeare mainly talked about how his love will be immortal. When he says

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee, (13-

14) he is expressing that as long as men live and read this poem, it will keep them alive. In other
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words, Shakespeare had concluded that his lover will remain alive through this poem and as long

as people exist.

As a whole, this poem's theme seems to be in between the beauty with immortality. The

poet explains why the object of affection isn't like summer days but much like beauty.

Shakespeare compares both the love and feelings that he possess to a summer days to that of his

love and feelings towards his beloved. He also intents to compare nature with the physical world

and finally he speaks on how her beauty was so pure and unstoppable that will remain as long as

it is read.

This poem is one of the best and most famous sonnet from one-hundred-fifty-four

sonnets that shakespeare has wrote. The sonnet consists of fourteen line verses in an iambic

pentameter. This poem is followed with a rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg and reflects the

rhetorical tradition of Petrarchan sonnet created by an Italian named Giacomo da Lentini.

Petrarchan usually discussed the love and beauty of a beloved just like Shakespeare did and by

the mid-sixteenth century, this poem got adapted to english.

However, Shakespeare didnt arrange his one-hundred-fifty-four sonnets into groups but

were later recognized as a pattern. It was noticed that the few first sonnet had similar themes

about a young man urging to marry and have children. On the other hand, sonnet eighteen was

structured as an argumentative monologue comparing beauty and immortality.

As you can see, Shakespeare was an intelligent man who had the creativity to express his

work of art through figurative language and was a genius in metaphors. In this poem,

Shakespeare began talking about summer days and was able to compare his beloved to

immortality, and never ending beauty. He expressed how he admired his lover's beauty and how

her beauty never ends even with aging, because aging is apart of nature. Shakespeare stated that
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even when nature gets in between, nature should be enjoyed and praised while it lasts. This is

because nature forms beautiful creations into perfection. As Shakespeare began, talking about

summer days and comparing his beloved compare her beauty and ending with immortality.
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Citations

1. "Sonnet 18." Poetry for Students, edited by Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary Ruby,

vol. 2, Gale, 1998, pp. 221-233. Gale Virtual Reference Library,

library.lavc.edu:2077/ps/i.do?p=GVRL&sw=w&u=lavc_main&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%

7CCX2691000026&asid=59d3876e8023b52a64cae84632605ec6. Accessed 19 Sept.

2017.

2. Jungman, Robert E. "Trimming Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. (Notes)." ANQ, no. 1, 2003, p.

18. EBSCOhost,

library.lavc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr

&AN=edsgcl.97118046&site=eds-live.

3. Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? Modern English

Shakespeare Translations & Resources, www.nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/18.htm.