Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

First published: 1609, in Sonnets

Type of poem: Sonnet

The Poem

This fourteen-line poem begins with a straightforward question in the first person, addressed to the object of the poet’s attention: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” After a direct answer, “Thou art more lovely and more temperate,” the next seven lines of the poem develop the comparison with a series of objections to a summer day.

William Shakespeare develops the “temperate” elements of his comparison first, leaving the “lovely” qualities for later consideration. His first criticism of summer is that in May rough winds shake the “darling” buds. This objection might seem trivial until one remembers that the poet is invoking a sense of the harmony implicit in classical concepts of order and form which writers of the Renaissance emulated. His use of the term “darling” extends the harmonious concept to include the vision of an orderly universe embracing its creations and processes with affection.

Such terms apply only to the ideal universe, however. In nature’s corrupt state, after Adam’s fall, all sublunary (earthly) forms and events fail to adhere to their primal harmony. Hence, rough winds shake the May buds and, as the next line indicates, summer is too short. Sometimes the sun is too hot; at other times the day becomes cloudy.

In lines 7 and 8, the poet summarizes his objections to the summer day by asserting that everything that is fair will be “untrimmed,” either by chance or by a natural process. The most obvious meaning here is that everything that summer produces will become less beautiful over time. The word “fair,” however, seems to mean more than merely beautiful to the eye and, like the words “lovely” and “darling,” comprehends all desirable qualities. Here, too, the poet invokes the concept of sublunary corruption. Although he is apparently still discussing the disadvantages of a summer’s day when compared to the person he is addressing, he is at the same time creating a transition to the next section of the poem by introducing the second element of his comparison, that comprehended in the word “lovely.”

The last six lines of the sonnet detail the advantages of the person addressed, indicating no diminution in the durability or fairness of that individual. The reason lies in the “eternal lines to time” that Shakespeare creates in his sonnet, knowing that the poem in which the person is memorialized will last through all time.

Although in the concluding couplet Shakespeare gives a direct statement of the theme, he uses the pronoun “this” to carry the weight of meaning and gives no verbal referent to the pronoun. Yet in making the poem itself the referent, the poet creates the object that will transmit the immortality of its subject to eternity.

Form and Devices

This poem is a sonnet, a poem consisting of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, a form created by Petrarch, an Italian poet of the fourteenth century. A Petrarchan sonnet usually contains eight lines sketching a situation (the octave) and six lines applying it (the sestet). The form was modified by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, appearing in poetic anthologies during the mid-sixteenth century. They and other poets created the English sonnet, consisting of three quatrains followed by a couplet, rhyming abab, cdcd, efef, gg. In this form, the eight-six division is occasionally maintained, as in Sonnet 18, but the concluding couplet summarizes the theme.

The sonnets of Shakespeare, taken as a whole, may be said to form a sonnet sequence: a series of sonnets, usually addressed to a woman for whom the poet has conceived a passion. From Petrarch’s time on, the conventions of the lover’s complaint pervade the imagery of these sequences, but their originality of imagery and conceit generally transcends the limitations of the troubadour traditions from which they derive. The women of these sequences have themselves become widely known: Petrarch’s Laura, Sir Philip Sidney’s Stella (Penelope Devereux), and Edmund Spenser’s Elizabeth Boyle have achieved the kind of immortality that Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 contemplates.

It is thus ironic that the object of Shakespeare’s own sequence should be unknown. The poems themselves range over many topics, including the beauty and desirability of marriage for a young man, a love triangle, a “dark lady,” and several philosophical and moral problems. They form a unique source of speculation on Shakespeare’s life in addition to being poems of great power.

In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare sets up his comparison by rhetorically introducing the basis for a simile that will underlie the structure of the whole poem: the comparison between the person who is the object of the poet’s attention and a summer’s day. The first image, of rough winds shaking May’s buds, is stated directly. In the next line, however, the poet uses the metaphor of summer’s lease being too short, aptly indicating the transitory nature of a season and, by extension, a year and a life.

The use of metonymy in “eye of heaven” (the sun) illustrates the power of that device: The eye is usually thought of as the agency for perception and character; here the central focus of the sky seems central to the concept of nature itself. Personification of this eye enhances the subject of the poem as a whole, for dimming his gold complexion implies hiding the beauty of the individual whom the poet addresses—something the poet intends to prevent.

The personification of death in line 11 curiously treats the word “shade,” often used to describe those who have died. Here it seems to signify, instead, the atmosphere of death—the shadow that hovers over those who come within its influence, which the poet’s lines are about to dispel.