This presentation provides an analysis of the poem, Sonnet 18.

1. SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's
day?
- William Shakespeare

2. William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) is an English poet and
playwright. Although he is regarded as the most significant writer
of English, not much is known about Shakespeare’s personal life.
He married Anne Hathaway and moved from his birthplace,
Stratford-upon-Avon, to London, where he wrote 35 plays, many
of which are believed to be the finest achievements of the English
language. He also wrote 154 sonnets: the first 126 were
dedicated to a young man called W. H. and the rest to a
mysterious woman who has become known as ‘the dark lady’.
WILLIAM SHAKEPEARE

3. BACKGROUND
Shakespeare uses this poem to praise his beloved’s
beauty (a young man) and believes that this beauty
surpasses the beauty of a summer’s day.
Opens the poem with a question: “Shall I compare thee to
a summer’s day?” Spend the whole poem answering the
question.
He primarily uses the imagery of nature throughout the
poem to proclaim his feelings about the beauty of his
beloved. The next 11 lines are devoted to the comparison
of the beauty between the two.

4. STRUCTURE
- 14 lines
- iambic pentameter
- split into 3 quatrains
(4 lines per stanza) &
one couplet (a pair of
rhyming lines)
RHYME
- Quatrains: alternating
rhyme scheme
- Couplet: pair of
rhyming lines
- ababcdcdefefgg
CONTENT
Quatrain 1: Poses the
question/problem/ idea
Quatrain 2 & 3:
Explores the problem
Couplet: the answer to
the
problem/idea/question
Identifying the structure
Shakespearean/ Elizabethan Sonnet

5. 1 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4 And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Rhetorical question
He speaks
directly to his
audience
(Consistent)
Personification
tactile
imagery
English summers do not last long

6. 5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6 And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8 By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
(imagery)
(personification)
internal rhyme; none
can escape the damage
of time
Personification; nature as the deliberate
theif of beauty; beauty is taken away

7. 9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
11 Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
(personification)
speaking to his
beloved
summer as a metaphor;
beloved's beauty wont fade like others
fair as a synonym for beauty;
his beauty wont disappear
Repetition of "Nor" ; command by the poet
Personification of death;
will not be able to capture
the beauty of his fair youth
After death has come the beloved's
beauty will not fade

8. 13
13
13 So long
So long
So long as
as
as men can breathe
men can breathe
men can breathe or
or
or eyes can see,
eyes can see,
eyes can see,
14
14
14 So long
So long
So long lives this, and this
lives this, and this
lives this, and this gives life to thee.
gives life to thee.
gives life to thee.
The sonnet has a loving tone
towards their loved one.
Imagery - as long as humanity
exists, you will exist.
Repetition -
a promise by
the poet
Just how the beloved has given life to the
sonnet, the sonnet will give life to the
beloved long after he has gone