My own analysis for Shakespeare's Sonnet xviii

· About the poet:

William shakespeare needs no introduction: He is an English dramatist, playwright and actor, considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time. He is English poet since Renaissance up to the present day. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1564. His father was very rich ,so Shakespeare studied at Cambridge and Oxford universities. He produced a great body of work: thirty-seven verse plays, many narrative poems and a sonnet sequence in one hundred and fifty-four sonnets. Some of Shakespeare's plays, such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, are among the most famous literary works of the world. However, his early works did not match the artistic quality of Marlowe's dramas. Ben Jonson (1572-1637), another contemporary playwright, wrote that Shakespeare's "wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too". Shakespeare possessed a large vocabulary for his day, having used 29,066 different words in his plays. Today the average English-speaking person uses something like 2,000 words in everyday speech. "It may be that the essential thing with Shakespeare is his ease and authority and thay you just have to accept him as he is if you are going to be able to admire him properly, in the way you accept nature, a piece of scenery for example, just as it is." (Ludwig Wittgenstein in Culture and Value, 1980)
Very little is known about Shakespeare early life, and his later works have inspired a number of interpretations. T.S. Eliot wrote that "I would suggest that none of the plays of Shakespeare has a "meaning," although it would be equally false to say that a play of Shakespeare is meaningless."

· Paraphrase:

The poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the poet's beloved. The poet opens his poem with comparing his beloved to a summer's day. The summer is unpleasant and very hot, but his beloved is always temperate. He thinks that the strong winds will evoke her feeling towards him. He says that the summer is too hot. The poet tells his beloved in exalted tones that every thing loses its beauty by time, but the fate plans that she will not lose her youth, nor will her beauty fade. He tells his beloved and his eyes are sparkling in the faint light that the ghost of death will never approach her face, nor will her everlasting beauty defame. He completes his smooth tongued that if his poem lives foreever, her beauty will live too. Much to his anxcety, he tells her that as long as there is life on earth, your beauty will never vanish and this poem will give you life because her beauty is embodied in this sonnet.

· Imagery:

In shakespeare's sonnet xviii, there many figures of speech. ( compare thee to a summer's day ) is a simile where the poet assimilates his beloved to a summer's day. It is obvious that the poet hates the summer because its heat, but – in the same time – he loves his beloved very much. Therefore, he compares his beloved to a summer's day to show her beauty and youth and also to prove that she is always temperate. There another figure of speech which is ( rough wind do shake the darling buds ). It is a metaphor where the poet assimilates the strong wind to a concrete thing. He chooses a specific kind of wind which is the rough wind because it can move any thing so that it can move abstract things such as the feeling of love. But about ( the eye of heaven shines ), it is an allusion where the poet does not mean that the heaven has shinning eyes, but he means that his beloved has sparkling eyes like the brightness stars which shine in the sky. It proves that his beloved is very beautiful and he describes her in and out. ( eternal summer ) seems to be an allusion, too. The poet means her beauty which will live foreever, but he does not mean the summer itself will live foreever. It proves that her beauty can not fade by time and the ghost of death can not approach her face or her youth. Also, it indecates that his beloved is handsome and he loves her very much. Finally, there is a personification in ( death brag thou ). The poet assimilates death to a person and this indicates that death is strong and cruel so that it could destroy every thing except his beloved's beauty. This proves that his beloved love life and the poet, therefore her beauty will resist death. Then, it will live foreever.

· Diction:

Shakespeare uses informal expressions and simple statsments, but he expresses them deeply. He uses abstract elements to strike the chord. Also, he tries to make his own language soft to express his own affection towards his beloved. He uses a comparetive language to describe his beloved's beauty. On the other hand, he does not use alleteration to form his poem and distinguish his own style. Therefore, he could attract a reader's attention.

· Tone:

The tone in this poem is a cheerful and optimistical to describe his beloved's beauty. Throughout the poem, the poem's tone changes because he mentions death which will not approach her face. Of course, death has a depressed tone and when he mentions his beloved's beauty, it indicates a cheerful tone. Hence, it is obvious that the poet's feelings towards his beloved are loveness and admiration for her beauty.

· Form:

This poem is a sonnet and it consists of three quatrains and one couplet. The classical sonnet consists of fourteen or sixteen lines of iambic pentameter with some form of alternating end rhyme and a turning point that it divides the poem into two parts. The structure of the sonnet allows it to present a theme, a situation, or a problem and then it tries to solve it.
On the other hand, quatrain is defined that as a rhyme scheme of four versed lines which has a rhyme scheme of ( abab ). But, couplet is defined as two lines from the sonnet and they work as a unit which has a rhyme scheme ( aa ).


Prepared by

Eman M. Mostafa Kamal
Junior student
2008/2009