William Shakespeare's
"Shall I Compare thee to a Summer's Day": Analysis

A BESTWORD ANALYSIS

William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” is perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet of his whole complete works of one hundred and fifty-four.  Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” is an intriguing sonnet that, though still comparing the beloved subject of the sonnet to a “Summer’s Day”, still finds its greatest virtue in the final two lines of the sonnet; the gift of immortality through Shakespeare’s written word.  By concluding “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” with the fateful couplet that he so chose, it may be argued that, though, yes, Shakespeare was comparing his subject to a “Summer’s Day”, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” is a proverbial work on literary immortality.

The renowned Shakespearean line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (1), is a line that few men in their youth have not memorized for recitation, or young women can remember reading in a letter from a ardent suitor.  It evokes images of 17th century lovers quoting poetry to one another in much the same way that Romeo serenaded Juliet from beneath her balcony.  In many ways Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is the single line that could sum several centuries of amorist literature; it speaks of beauty, love, devotion, and has been popularly read and recited throughout the centuries as both the archetype and the apex of traditional english love poetry. 

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY
SONNET XVIII

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 wand'rest 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.

                                  (William Shakespeare, 1609)

William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” opens with a four line stanza, or quatrain, with the first two lines, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate:” (1-2), introducing the general premise of the sonnet; that his subject is, in many ways, far better than a summer’s day.  Shakespeare’s subject is, as he describes, “more lovely and more temperate” (2); his subject being more beautiful and significantly more balanced or emotionally stable than the harsh extremes of a temperamental English summer. 

William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” then proceeds, for the following six lines, to bring to light the many failings and short fallings that a summer’s day can have.  Shakespeare describes in the third line, “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” (3),  how early summer’s weather can be considered a bit tempestuous; it’s winds ruining any excursions with its stormy torrents.  Shakespeare’s fourth line, “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:” (4), describes how though summer may be beautiful it still is only temporary and, like many beautiful things, must draw to a close and make way for their notorious winters of aging and eventual death.  Shakespeare’s fifth and sixth lines describe how, during a particularly hot summer, the sun, “the eye of heaven” (5), shines far too intensely and in cloudy weather the days are overcast and gray; “his gold complexion dimmed;” (6).

The seventh line of “Shall I Compare thee to a Summer’s Day?” marks a shift in William Shakespeare’s theme, of comparing the sonnet’s subject to a far less adequate summer’s day, towards the underlying and arguably main premise of the fading of youth’s beauty, the natural course of decay, and death being usurped by literature and poetry.  Shakespeare’s seventh and eight lines, “And every fair from fair sometime declines, / By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed;” (7-8), describes how “fairness” or beauty fades away by chance happenings or mortality’s helplessness against the ravages of time.  Shakespeare’s “Summer’s Day” as well as all beautiful, youthful things in nature eventually succumb to age and death.  Shakespeare’s subject, too, is victim to these forces and much like the summer’s day, they too will grow old and die.

William Shakespeare’s ninth and tenth lines, however, for the sake of his subject, attacks the conventional laws of nature and death: “But thy eternal summer shall not fade, / Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;” (9-10).  Shakespeare declares that his subject will not loose their “eternal summer” (9), or lose the fairness that they possess or owe to nature. Shakespeare goes on to proclaim “Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, / When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:” (11-12), promising that his subject no longer walks under the shade-like gaze of death, and that they now walk eternally on earth as an immortal being, growing perpetually throughout time.

William Shakespeare’s sonnet “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” concludes with the fateful couplet, “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” (13-14); essentially stating that so long as men live and have the eyes to read Shakespeare’s sonnet, men will know of his subjects beauty and this poem will be the key to their immortality. In literature, Shakespeare decrees, we defeat death and our natural mortality to become metaphysical creatures of the written word; our memories living on throughout time to exist deathlessly in a state of literary grace. 

It is in this assertion that William Shakespeare finds perhaps the greatest virtue in his sonnet “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”.  While, indeed, it is a love sonnet, meant to either proclaim affections for the subject or win favor with its words, Shakespeare’s sonnet, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”, is also a great work of literary philosophy.  Shakespeare appears to believe that immortality is found in the writings of scribes, artists, and poets who document their subjects, in whatever medium they so work, to have their art survive throughout the ages and be incorporated through generation after generation of readerships to far outlive their creators indefinitely, or perhaps even infinitely. Through words, Shakespeare would agree, death is defeated and immortality is discovered.

Written by Jordan Dickie
CEO, Executive Editor
BestWord SEO Copywriting Services
jordandickie@bestword.ca

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