Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? is the first line of Sonnet 18 by the great English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is perhaps the greatest dramatist in history, as well as a fine poet. See Shakespeare, William.
The sonnets were published in 1609, when Shakespeare had already established himself as a playwright. He probably composed the verses over a number of years, though their dates are unknown. There are 154 sonnets in the sequence, but some scholars think a different poet composed Sonnets 153 and 154, those focused on Cupid, the Roman god of love. Only two of the sonnets were published before 1609, in the anthology The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 18 consists of three quatrains (four-line units) followed by a concluding couplet (two-line unit). Each quatrain has a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, with the final couplet a rhyming one (gg).
Loading the player...Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed. But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The 18th sonnet is an important one in the overall sequence of 154. Like the first 126 sonnets, Sonnet 18 is addressed to a young nobleman who is the object of the poet’s affection. The first 17 sonnets are specifically concerned with persuading the young man to marry and have children. The sonnets that follow are still addressed to the young man, though the poet’s relationship to his friend features more prominently in Sonnet 18 and those following it.
Sonnet 18 is one of the best known of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Its opening line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”, is among the most famous in the English language. However, after this familiar opening, the poem does not follow as promised. Rather, it describes exactly how a summer’s day is not like the object of its address: “Thou are more lovely and more temperate.” A sequence of images then depicts how summer is often marred by rough winds, or sun that is too hot, or light dimmed by cloud.
The sonnet also brings up the sobering realization of “nature’s changing course.” All beauties in nature eventually fade—”every fair from fair sometime declines.” But the young friend, by contrast, is in possession of “eternal summer” and will not lose his fairness. Death will not proclaim its victory over his youth and beauty. And the reason for this is the “eternal lines” of both poetry and the young man’s future family. In a brilliant use of metaphors, Shakespeare glorifies human lineage while also elevating the immortal power of his poetry. The youth, if he heeds the poet and multiplies, shall grow through his lineage to the end of time. The “eternal lines” of poetry will also guarantee his immortality through the sonnet. So long as people can live and see, the sonnet claims, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
For more information about Shakespeare’s sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (Shakespeare’s poems). See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry); Poetry (Forms) (History) (Renaissance poetry).
