William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford Upon Avon. In 1570 he attended a grammar school where he studied English, among other subjects. In 1572, Williams father, John Shakespeare, took him to a play. In 1582, William married Anne Hathaway, and in 1585, they had twins, a boy named Hamnet and a girl named Judith. William left his family in 1588 and in 1593 the Earl of Southampton began to pay Shakespeare for his work and allowed him to continue writing. In 1616 William returned home to Stratford. Between this time he made a name for himself by working with King James I and building the famous Globe Theatre. In 1616, William Shakespeare fell ill and died.
In Shakespeare’s life he wrote over one hundred and fifty sonnets, many plays including Romeo and Juliet and many poems. One of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet’s is XVIII, Shall I Compare Thee… This sonnet shows William Shakespeare compares his love to a summer day. Shall I Compare Thee… was written by William Shakespeare and was the eighteenth sonnet composed by him. This sonnet has a rhyme scheme of a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f, g, g, and is written in iambic pentameter. This sonnet was written for one of Shakespeare’s loves although it is unknown to whom this sonnet was devoted.
The first line is a question where Shakespeare asks, “Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?” The comparison between the person and the beauty in the poem hover throughout the sonnet. The second line means that the loved one is more perfect than the beauty of a summer’s day and is more “temperate”, meaning that the person is more restrained and gentle unlike the summer’s day.
Rough winds do shake… shows that the summer’s day can be violent and harm the darling buds of May, which were an indication of the favourite flowers. summer's lease hath all too short a date suggests that summer does not last very long, although it is very beautiful. Shakespeare goes on to say, too hot the eye of heaven shines, this means that the sun can sometimes be too hot. The sun has been personified as it is described as an eye and is therefore given a living quality. Shakespeare also uses heaven as, in some ways, it describes the person as a form of heaven because they are so beautiful.
…his gold complexion dimmed can mean that the sun can sometimes be too gloomy and therefore the weather can be too cold and therefore a summer’s day is not always beautiful. The sun is personified again here as it is given a ‘complexion’ which is usually used for a person to describe their face, but here William Shakespeare uses it to described the sun as a whole.
William Shakespeare then says that eventually all beauty is lost, maybe just by chance, or because of nature, for example, by falling sick or old age. But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Here Shakespeare means that the loved one’s beauty will not just disappear nor will it vanish due to old age or illness.
Shakespeare demonstrates that the loved one will not walk in “death’s” shadow, and that the person will grow old in eternal lines which will never be lost. Death is also personified here as it “brags” which shows that “death” can talk and it is therefore human or in some ways alive. After which Shakespeare says, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. This means that the person will be beautiful as long as people are alive and can have eyes to see and read because William Shakespeare has captured the person’s beauty inside this sonnet.
I think that this sonnet is very good because it portrays the person’s beauty very well in comparison to a summer’s day which is, in my opinion, very beautiful itself. I think that the loved one would like this sonnet because it shows their good points and it may flatter them in a way.
Another sonnet that William Shakespeare wrote was sonnet one hundred and thirty, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun…, this has the traditional Shakespearean rhyme scheme of a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f, g, g. This sonnet also has a meter of iambic pentameter and the topic of this sonnet is also about beauty and love, although this differs from sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee…
In the beginning William Shakespeare writes that his mistress, a loved one, has not got eyes as bright as the sun nor are her lips as red as coral. Shakespeare uses metaphors to compare his love to the sun, using the word ‘like’. This shows to the reader that there is not a comparison between his love’s eyes and the sun.
After the description of his lover’s lips Shakespeare describes her breast as “dun” meaning that her breast are slightly tanned which was very bad in the Elizabethan age when pure white skin was popular. He then describes her hairs as “wires” which in Shakespeare’s day were thought to be beautiful as in the wires were gold and this was used to show beauty as the wires were used as jewellery. The surprise to the reader here is that the wires are black which shows that they are not beautiful gold as the reader in Shakespeare’s day may have thought.
Shakespeare then says that he has seen the beauty of a rose, but in his love’s cheek there is no hint of a rose meaning that her cheeks are not red which was also popular in Shakespeare’s time. Here damasked means that there is a pinkish tint.
William Shakespeare then illustrates to the reader that his mistress smells badly because he has smelt beautiful perfumes, but his mistress’ breath is not as beautiful as they were. He then tells us that his mistress has a crude voice, I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, That music hath a far more pleasing sound. This shows that he would rather listen to beautiful music rather than the voice of the one he loves.
I grant I never saw a goddess go, Here Shakespeare admits that he never saw a Goddess walk away, but when his mistress walks, she treads on the ground which shows that his mistress is not a Goddess as she walks on the ground unlike a Goddess. So far in the sonnet Shakespeare has depicted his mistress in the reader’s mind as being fairly old and not very attractive although she is his mistress.
In the rhyming couplet at the end, William Shakespeare describes to the reader that he has an unusual love with his mistress and that it is rare or precious to him. He then says that his mistress is beautiful although he has contradicted her beauty in the above quatrains.
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare. This is very strange because Shakespeare has said throughout most of the sonnet that his mistress is not beautiful nor has she any goddess like qualities, and yet he loves her.
I do not think that this sonnet is very effective in portraying his love for his mistress because at first he tells the reader about all her negative qualities including her bad breath, wiry hair and her tanned complexion which were all unattractive in Shakespeare’s time. However, he is making the point that love appreciates more than just superficial beauty.
There are several similarities between these two sonnets the first is they are both in the same format, e.g. iambic pentameter, fourteen lines long etc, and that they are both, in some ways, under the topic of love. The main similarity is that there is a topic on love, although in the second sonnet, Shakespeare criticises his love, while in the first sonnet Shakespeare praises his love. In both of his sonnets, Shakespeare declares his love for the person, unconditional of their personalities.
Out of the two I would think that sonnet eighteen is better because Shakespeare describes the beauty of his love in comparison to that of a summer’s day which I find is very beautiful to.
Conclusion
I find that pre-nineteenth century sonnets are still similar to new sonnets, post- nineteenth century sonnets including The Lynching, If We Must Die and Glasgow Sonnet, to name a few. For example in the sonnet, If We Must Die, the meter is iambic pentameter and the rhyme scheme is of a Shakespearean format. The Lynching, unlike some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, is about the fight of black people in Claude McKay’s time.
Glasgow Sonnet by Edwin Morgan is written in a Petrarchan form and adopts the same rhyme scheme and also consists of an octave, which illustrates a point or opinion, and a sestet, which develops that opinion.
This shows that the literary tradition of sonnet writing is still the same or similar because both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan forms are still used today.
After analysing these two sonnets by William Shakespeare I find that, in my opinion, Shall I Compare Thee… is a better sonnet than My Mistress’ Eyes... I think that the language that Shakespeare uses is very good because Shakespeare uses personification, and metaphors to convey an image of his lover.
