Summary of sonnet 18

                                                          Shall I compare Thee(Sonnet 18)
                                                                                                        by Shakespeare

The speaker opens the literary work with a matter self-addressed to the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” subsequent eleven lines area unit dedicated to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what primarily differentiates the young man from the summer’s day: he's “more pretty and additional temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward extremes: they're agitated by “rough winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) usually shines “too hot,” or too dim. And summer is fleeting: its date is just too short, and it results in the withering of season, as “every honest from honest someday declines.” the ultimate stanza of the sonnet tells however the beloved differs from the summer therein respect: his beauty can last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade...”) and never die. within the couplet, the speaker explains, however, the beloved’s beauty can accomplish this accomplishment, and not expire as a result of it's preserved within the literary work, will|which is able to} last forever; it'll live “as long as men will breathe or eyes can see.”

Commentary

This sonnet is actually the foremost illustrious within the sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets; it's going to be the foremost illustrious verse form in English. Among Shakespeare’s works, solely lines like “To be or to not be” and “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thousand Romeo?” area unit known. This is often to not say that it's the least bit the simplest or most fascinating or most stunning of the sonnets; however, the simplicity and fairness of its praise of the beloved has bonded its place.

On the surface, the literary work is just an announcement of praise regarding the sweetness of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of breeziness and warmth, however, the beloved is usually gentle and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified because of the “eye of heaven” with its “gold complexion”; the representational process throughout is easy and unaffected, with the “darling buds of May” giving thanks to the “eternal summer”, that the speaker guarantees the beloved. The language, too, is relatively plain for the sonnets; it's not signed with beginning rhyme or rhyme, and nearly each line is its own self-contained clause—almost each line ends with some punctuation, that effects an intermission.

Sonnet eighteen is that the initial literary work within the sonnets to not expressly encourage the young man to possess youngsters. The “procreation” sequence of the primary seventeen sonnets all over with the speaker’s realization that the young man won't  like youngsters to preserve his beauty; he may conjointly live, the speaker writes at the top of Sonnet seventeen, “in my rhyme.” Sonnet eighteen, then, is that the initial “rhyme”—the speaker initial arrange to preserve the young man’s beauty for all time. a crucial theme of the sonnet (as it's a crucial theme throughout abundant of the sequence) is that the power of the speaker’s literary work to defy time and last forever, carrying the sweetness of the beloved all the way down to future generations. The beloved’s “eternal summer” shall not fade exactly as a result of it's embodied within the sonnet: “So long as men will breathe or eyes will see,” the speaker writes within the couplet, “So long lives this, and this offers life to thee”