Poetry analysis
Shall I Comepare Thee (Sonnet 18)
By William Shakespeare
Before William Shakespeare died, he managed to write 154 sonnets Out of all 154 sonnets the most famous and well-known is Sonnet 18, which this paper is going to be about. Because the sonnets written by William Shakespeare, was so beloved, all of Shakespeare’s sonnet-heritage is being called Shakespearean sonnets.
There are different indicators that, helps to define a sonnet. First of all ‘Shall I Comepare Thee’ consists of fourteen lines, where the eight first lines called the octave presents which aspects the poem will regard. The last six lines called the sestet gives a personal view of what the poem really is about.
‘Shall I Comepare Thee’ is divided by three quatrains followed by a couplet and has the traditional characteristic rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg.
The metrical aspect of sonnet 18 is that the poem got written in iambic form with one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The sonnet has five feet in each line and therefore it is under pentameter. For example if the 2 first lines in Sonnet 18 should be divided into the rhythm of five in stressed and unstressed syllables it would look like this:
The stressed syllables, is the ‘green’ ones and unstressed syllables is the ‘red’ ones.
Shall I - compare - thee to - a sum - mer’s day?
Thou art - more love - ly and - more tem - perate.
Shakespeare starts the poem with the question ‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’
What actually is an actual and evident question. Shakespeare’s poem, Is about a girl, which is more lovely than summer due to the fact that she has no flaws. Through the poem William Shakespeare presents various flaws that summer has, like rough winds and also in the lines 4 & 5: ‘And summer's lease hath all too short a date’ which means the