I chose Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 because it seems really pure how he flatters a male persona without hesitation. The overall mood is so bright and warm as he focuses on beauty, regardless if one is female or male, and its perseverance overtime. Other readers should read this poem because the setting is fresh and vivid, and the tone is loving and honest.
The poem starts with a question, which is unusual and I feel the confidence of the poetry from the question of the poet. I am interested in the poem because the poet starts with the first line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Summer is the most powerful season to describe beauty and the workings of the life. Summer has various life forms such as flowers blossoming, animals grazing, and the trees a full of leaves and fruit. Shakespeare suggests that “thee” is superior to summer, comparing “thee” to its beauty and youth. Using “thee”, he is using formal language which is showing respect.
He elaborates the eternal beauty of “thee” in lines five through nine:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade.
Shakespeare compares “his face” to gold, which is symbolic of beauty. In contrast, in line 7 he points out that the fair person’s beauty lessens because of natural aging. However, in line9 he suggests that thy’s beauty would never diminish as his “summer” would never end. The language he uses is personification. He creates human’s beauty out of the summer season, and “the eyes of heaven” represents the sun which creates “his gold complexion.” He admits that the eternal beauty does not exist, but he emphasizes thee’s beauty withstood time. In line 12, “when in eternal lines to time thou grow’s,” Shakespeare expresses that “thou” is eternal in the poem and “thou” is growing with it. I think that Shakespeare believes thee’s beauty will last forever in his poem.
There are comparisons such as “eternal lines” and “time thou grow’st,”which mean beauty lasts forever even as the years of the life pass. Shakespeare concludes with lines 13 to 14 which prove his belief, “so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” He identifies two characteristics of human species, which are breath and sight. In the final line, he implies that thee’s beauty will exist as long as men have this ability to see and to breathe.
Shakespeare uses repetitive language in order to stress his belief of thee’s long lasting beauty. He repeats “nor” in lines10 and 11, to exemplify that in neither situation will the character’s beauty decline. In lines 13 to 14, he repeats “so long” to emphasize the enduring magnificence of thee’s beauty.
People’s expectation of Shakespeare was that he was a gay man, largely because of this sonnet, Shakespeare uses a masculine pronoun like “his gold complexion” to refer to the sun in line 6, and “in his shade” to reflect Death in line 11. He also makes reference to men’s ability rather than humans in line 13. I believe that he had a biased perspective because in his time women were not allowed to perform on the stage. Shakespeare had to give a role to a man even it was a woman’s role (“Who became an actor?” para 2). Through this he discovered the beauty of the male species and derived his idolization of men from his experience. I do not believe this defined him as a gay man because in the later sonnets, he uses a feminine pronoun to refer to women, so I would categorize him as possibly a bisexual.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 shows that beauty stands the test of time. He uses a formal reference to the persona and expresses his beauty through several figures of speech including symbolism, personification, and repetition.
References
Sakespeare, William. “Sonnets 18.” The Broadview of Introduction to literature: Poetry. Ed. Lisa Chalykoff, Neta Gorden, and Paul Lumsden. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2013. Print
“Who became an actor?” The Shakespeare Globe Trust. n.d. Web. Jan. 2014.
The Syllabus Project 