His works include 38 plays think Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, though there are many more! But his collection of sonnets had a major influence on the literary culture and style of his era. When Shakespeare began writing sonnets, it was traditional for sonneteers to express an obsessive, worshipping love for an almost perfect female love interest. We may not know exactly why Shakespeare wrote these sonnets, but when we look at all sonnets together, we can understand how Shakespeare used individual sonnets to develop overarching themes for the entire Sonnets collection.
A sonnet sequence is a series of sonnets in a single collection that are focused on the same themes. Sonnet sequences became popular during the Petrarchan Era of poetry and were used to develop a theme that is threaded through all of the sonnets in a single sequence. Each individual sonnet in a sequence stands on its own thematically and structurally, but each sonnet also works to build thematic connections between poems as the sonnet sequence progresses. You can think of it like this: a sonnet sequence is like a chain.
Each poem is its own link During the Renaissance, when Shakespeare was doing his writing, sonnet sequences were a very popular form. It might not seem super clear from this sonnet alone that the Fair Youth is male, but other sonnets in the sequence make this more clear. For example, in Sonnet 3, the speaker encourages the Fair Youth to father children. And in Sonnet 8, the speaker tells the Fair Youth that he should get married and become a husband!
So what's up with comparing someone to a summer's day? Keep reading to find out! Now that you know a little bit about how this poem came to be, go ahead and reread the sonnet. But the speaker is actually saying that the Fair Youth is more beautiful than nature!
According to the speaker, the beauty of nature changes and fades, but the beauty of the Fair Youth is immortalized because his beauty is more than just outward appearance. Thou art more lovely and more temperate:. Whereas outward beauty diminishes over time, inner beauty endures. So where do we see decay cropping up in this sonnet? Look no further than lines three through eight:.
In the lines above, things that were once beautiful are degraded by nature and the passing of time. Beautiful flower buds that appeared in spring are stripped away by rough winds as the seasons change to summer.
The hot days of summer dim and fade into fall, and then the earth grows darker as winter nears. Instead of fading into fall like real summer, the speaker says that the beauty the Fair Youth possesses will outlast the tests of time. But rather than decaying under the shadow of old age and death, the Fair Youth will live out his days with the same intrinsic beauty and vigor that comes from a strong inner spirit.
This theme appears as the speaker makes references to the changing of seasons from spring, to summer, to fall. The passage of time is also explicitly referenced in lines twelve through fourteen:. It seems that the speaker is saying that the Fair Youth defies the loss of beauty by growing with time. Growing and evolving as time passes is one of the ways that humans stay relevant, engaged, and lively As long as life keeps going on and on, and as long as the Fair Youth keeps growing and evolving, these traits will give life to the Fair Youth.
So how come Sonnet 18 is probably the most easily recognizable poem in the English language? We tend to idealize love as that feeling where you care about someone else even more than you do about yourself; you would do anything for them. We also like to think of the artist as offering up his life and his work for the beautification and betterment of society.
Definitely check it out. Cartoon of Shakes quoting Sonnet 55 Check out this quote and how well it works with Sonnet The Sonnets A good modern edition of the Sonnets. Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. The poet starts the praise of his beloved without ostentation and slowly builds the image of his beloved into that perfect being.
The beloved has become the very standard by which true beauty can and should be judged. The latter part of the poem is marked by a more expansive tone exploring deeper feelings. The poet responds to such joy and beauty by ensuring that his beloved will last forever, saved from the oblivion that accompanies death.
The easy music of the poem may also work to reinforce the inferiority of summer compared to the beloved. Shakespeare primarily uses imagery of nature throughout the poem to proclaim his feelings about the beauty of his beloved. He describes summer in a way that contrasts the kind of summer we usually picture. Shakespeare works to tear down all positive thoughts of summer so that the reader can recognize just how much he lifts up the image of his beloved.
Sonnet 18 contains the elements of a classic sonnet. It is written in 14 lines and contains the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg.
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