Art and Life in Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: The Ephemeral Nature of Beauty
Overview
This essay analyzes Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 to explore the relationship between art and life through the speaker's comparison of his beloved's beauty to a summer's day. The paper argues that Shakespeare uses this metaphorical comparison to demonstrate how beauty, like summer itself, is temporary and subject to the passage of time and decline.
What this essay covers
- Introduction with central question 'shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' establishing the poem's focus
- Analysis of the beloved's temperate beauty contrasted with summer's extreme conditions and transience
- Conclusion connecting the comparison to the theme that beauty, like art, is ephemeral and fades with time
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What does William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” tell us about the relationship between art and life?
The poem, Sonnet 18, is mainly praise by Shakespeare for his beloved beauty. The speaker introduces the poem with a critical question addressed to the beloved, “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Shakespeare 39). The poem is devoted to this comparison of his beloved beauty and a summer’s day. The beloved beauty is temperate and lovely. Summer’s days frequently tend towards the extreme as they are likely to be shaken by winds. In the summer’s days, the sun, which is the eye of heaven, usually shines too hot. Summer’s days are fleeting with their date too short, leading to autumn withering as every fair can also sometimes decline. Shakespeare depicts the similarity between his beloved temperate and lovely beauty as synonymous to the pleasurable feeling of the summer’s day when the sun shines. In this regard, through relating his beloved beauty to summer’s days, the situation creates an awareness that this beauty too is not everlasting and will thus, at some point, fade. As a result, by comparing his beloved beauty to summer’s days, Shakespeare makes this beauty look like an art whose quality and delight fades with time. The beauty is associated with a real-life event, that is, the ever-transitioning summer’s days.
Work Cited
Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 18. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004.