Sonnet 18 Essay: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day
Sonnet 18 is the popular sonnet about the love of a beloved person. Written by William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 is one of the 154 sonnets he wrote, that is loved and known by many to this day. The poem starts with the phrase “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” This deep poem has a vast amount of meaning in it, and this essay will discuss some key elements of information about the poem.
William Shakespeare was an English poet from the late 1500s. He was born to John and Mary Arden on April 23, 1564 in the city of Stratford-upon-Avon in England. Most likely, he had education in King Edward IV Grammar School. There he learned the Latin and Greek languages, and also read Roman works of drama. He was married to Anne Hathaway at the age of eighteen, and they had two children, Susanna and Judith. It is a fairly accurate guess that between 1585 and 1592, he worked as an actor and also wrote Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece the following year. Venus and Adonis became a popular poem
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The poem starts with the question, “Shall I compare thee to a summer 's day?” which invokes a comparison between the person and a day of summer. The person is described as lovely and having self-restraint; but then sometimes the person, like the summer, isn’t too enjoyable due to the sweltering heat of the sun. The pattern continues. Shakespeare explains that beauty may not be everlasting, but then he also says that the person will forever stay “young”. The person is amazing, though and so he explains that his or her beauty and youth will be eternal. Then, there’s the turn after three quatrains, and it leads to the couplet that ends it all. As long as people and the poem live, the author says this sonnet shall make the person immortal and never-ending. Summed up, the sonnet speaks of this person’s everlasting beauty despite death and misfortune. It can be interpreted in different ways for different
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