Sonnet no 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day - Critical appreciation

Sonnet no 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day-Critical appreciation

Sonnet no 18 is one of the most lovable and simple of all the 154 sonnets of Shakespeare marks a break from the so called “procreation Sonnets”(sonnet no 1-17).The “procreation sonnets” try to convince the beloved . The mysterious Mr .W.H to beget child, the beautiful child who would stand as the replica of his beautiful  father , thereby making the father immoral .But from sonnet no 18 the poet finds it more convenient to confer immortality on the beloved by the virtue of his poetic  potency. The change of tone is already apparent in the concluding couplet of Sonnet no 17.

“But were some child of yours alive that time

You should live twice in it and in my rhyme”.

 While the Shakespearean dramas are hallmark of poet’s capacity of objectifying  his ideas on politics , love and war, Shakespearean sonnets are the documents of the poet’s most intimate involvement with his beloved .These sonnets presents the poets subjective obsession with and insecurity for the beloved’s beauty ,but the way they propose to perpetuate that beauty against  time promotes these compositions to the universal level .Shakespeare registers his individuality everywhere be it the conception of the thought or the structural execution of the theme.

Sonnet no 18 begins in an ingenious way aiming to establish the exclusivity of the beloved’s beauty. The poet choose to compare it with that season of the year which is accepted as the most  enjoyable  of all the seasons , the summer:

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Day.

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

The poet declares that despite being highly associated with delight , summer has many drawbacks. Rough wind blows violently to disturb the climactic tranquility and often knocks down the tender buds of  May . How much people may long for it ,  its time span is really limited , covering  only three months. The warmth of the sunshine sometimes becomes too hot for enjoyment and the bright gold sunlight is often dimmed by cloud. This type of drawbacks ,  as the poet says , is the characteristic of all the earthly objects. Which is more frustrating is that whatever valuable or positive  any earthly object  is invested with that must fade away invariably:

“And every fair from fair sometimes decline.

By chance or natures changing course , untrimmed”

What is notable is the speaker’s delicate use of pun on the word ‘fair’. while the first one denotes the abstract quality of fairness, the second one indicates the object bearing it . A realistic Shakespeare puts forward the reason for this decline of beauty in the most realistic terms . it can be destroyed by chance that is by some accidental cause , or it can fade away in the course of time’s natural progression.

     While the octave presents nature, both human and external , subject to decay  and  decrepitude, the sestet contrasts it by declaring that the rare beauty of his beloved is free from the mortal impact of time:

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade

When in eternal lines to time thou  growst,”

The poet ensures that death will be unable to drag his beloved into the realm of oblivion since  his immortal ‘lines’ will continue to protect the beauty from “Time’s scythe”(Sonnet no 12).The word “growst”  indicates that the poem will serve as an instrument of not only perpetuating but also enhancing the glory of the beloved’s rare beauty by making it an object of delightful interest to every successive generations of readers .The concluding couplet displays a surge of sheer confidence in the in poet’s composing ability:

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see.

So long lives this ,this gives life to thee.”

      This declaration comes as a contrast to the poet’s discouraging reference to “pupil pen” and “ barren rhyme”. In Sonnet 16 and for the first time in the entire range of sonnet sequence establishes what “miracle”(sonnet 65) his poetic talent can create.