William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is justifiably considered one of the most beautiful verses in the English language. After much debate among scholarsit is now generally accepted that the subject of the poem is male.
Introduction
The nature of the relationship between the two men is highly ambiguous and it is often impossible to tell if Shakespeare is describing platonic or erotic love. Sonnet 18 is perhaps the most famous of the sonnets Shakespeare completed in his lifetime not including the six he included in several of his plays. Sonnet 18 explained poem was originally published, along with Shakespeare's other sonnets, in a quarto in Scholars have identified three subjects in this collection of poems—the Rival Poet, the Dark Lady, and an anonymous young man known as the Fair Youth.
Sonnet 18 is addressed to the latter. The poem opens with the immortal line "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Although there is some debate about the correct ordering of the texts, the first sonnets are thematically interlinked and demonstrate a progressive narrative.
Sonnet 18 explained tell of a romantic affair that becomes more passionate and intense with each sonnet.
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Sonnet 18 touches on a few simple themes:. In this way, Shakespeare suggests that love is an even more powerful force than nature. Like many other sonnets, Sonnet 18 contains a voltaor turn, where the subject matter changes and the speaker shifts from describing the subject's beauty to describing what will happen after the youth eventually grows old and dies. Sonnet 18 is an English or Elizabethan sonnet, meaning it contains 14 lines, including three sonnet 18 explained and a couplet, and is written in iambic pentameter.
The Full Text of “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen”
The poem follows the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef sonnet 18 explained. Like many sonnets of the era, the poem takes the form of a direct address to an unnamed subject. The volta occurs at the beginning of the third quatrain, where the poet turns his attention to the future—"But thy eternal summer shall not fade. The key literary device in the poem is metaphor, which Shakespeare references directly in the opening line.
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However, instead sonnet 18 explained using it traditionally—comparing the subject to a summer's day—Shakespeare draws attention to all the ways in which the comparison is inadequate. Little is known about the composition of Shakespeare's sonnets and how much of the material in them is autobiographical. Scholars have long speculated about the identity of the young man who is the subject of the first sonnets, but they have yet to find any conclusive answers. Sonnet 18 contains several of Shakespeare's most famous lines.
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