Shakespeare sonnet xviii
1247 mots
5 pages
Power of the youth vs. Power of the NatureWilliam Shakespeare’s sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” is a typical Shakespearean sonnet written in limbicsp pentameter, and following the traditional English rhyme scheme AB AB CD CD EF EF GG. The author composed it with three quatrains and two flat rimes concluding the poem, and uses a figurative language such as metaphors and anaphora to provide the reader with a kind of permanent tension and to increase emotion presents sp into the text. . In this sonnet, Shakespeare compares the beauty of the beloved person to nature through a “summer’s day”, and the effects and consequences of the time passing on them. For him, youth has an eternal existence that nature does not have and he subsequently makes it evident that the beloved is more than a human being, which can be compared to a god (goddess). The poet will use and compare descriptions of love and power of the youth, nature and ravages of the time in order to point out this immortality through poetry,.
From the first verse, the reader wonders why Shakespeare begins his poem by a question:” “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”, comparing immediately the beloved to nature. Why to start with such a question? Probably the author wants to show the reader the importance of his relation with the beloved, the perfection of this last or, at least, the degree of his feelings for him. The second verse “Thou art more lovely and more temperate:” indicates that the poet made a mistake by comparing her/ him to “a summer’s day” and wants to correct it. In fact, the beloved has something that the summer does not have: a constant temper and a personality which can be controlled. The end of this first quatrain emphasizes this idea: the verses 3 and 4 points out the inconstancy of the climate with the “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” and “summer’s lease hath all too short a date”.Also, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of the sun, symbol of