Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,Īnd summer’s lease hath all too short a date. The poet’s friend will remain alive forever in this poem. The speaker in the poem emphasizes his adoration of his friend’s lasting beauty that will never fade like the beauty found in nature. The tone of William Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 18’ is an endearing deep devotion to friendship. This sonnet may seem at first to simply praise the beauty of the poet’s love interest. It is highly sentimental and full of feelings. The mood and tone of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is one of deep love and affection. The stability of love and its power to immortalize someone is the overarching theme of this poem.

Shakespeare uses Sonnet 18 to praise his beloved’s beauty and describe all the ways in which their beauty is preferable to a summer day. Give special attention to how sonnets were viewed at the time, as well as which other poets were writing them and what we know about Shakespeare’s sonnets today. Do some research on Shakespeare’s life and the inspirations for his sonnets in particular. Shakespeare wrote this poem as part of his Fair Youth sequence of sonnets, which historians actually believe were about a young man. Petrarchan sonnets typically discussed the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but not always. The poem reflects the rhetorical tradition of an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. It also has the characteristic rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter: three quatrains followed by a couplet. “Sonnet 18” is one of the best-known 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Writer: William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) Poem: Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Shakespeare sonnet 18