Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day Summary: West Bengal Board Class 12 English
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
William Shakespeare
Author name:- | William Shakespeare |
Born:- | 1564 |
Death:- | 1616 |
About Author:-
William Shakespeare was a famous English poet and dramatist the sixteenth century. He wrote sonnet, tragedies, comedies and historical plays. Some of his noted works are Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Venus and Adonis,
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Shakespearean sonnet has fourteen lines, ending in a rhymed couplet. In this poem Shakespeare enquires into the theme of the destruction brought by time and the eternal quality of art which transcends the ravages of time.
Summary
Sonnet no. 18 is dedicated to a friend of the poet whom he admires greatly. The friend is a young man of great beauty. To bring out the exquisite beauty of his friend, the poet goes into several comparisons in the first light lines. The poem says that where as the beauty of summer’s day is subject to fluctuation, the beauty of his friend is eternal and unchangeable. The poem affirms that his friend is more beautiful than the changing beauty of nature. It is beauty of the sort whose fairness cannot be entrapped age or death. The poet immortalises the beauty of his friend in his verse. Whenever the poem will be read, the beauty of his friend would be revived. This points to the timeless nature of art which captures beauty and keeps it safe from, to quote another line from Shakespeare, “the blank hand of time”.