Beauty is very important in today’s society. Many people fear that they will lose their good looks as they age. They begin to wear make-up or even go to the extremes of plastic surgery. However, in William Shakespeare’s poem, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day,” Shakespeare plays on the idea of beauty that surpasses age and even death. Through the simple language, tones, and theme in Howard Moss’s poem, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day,” the meaning of Shakespeare’s poem is made more clear. William Shakespeare’s poem, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” uses diction, personification, theme, and tone to illustrate the narrator’s feelings about the everlasting beauty of a significant other.
Shakespeare’s narrator has a tone of admiration and is very endearing. His tone is present throughout the poem in the way each line is set up and through the choice of words. The admiring tone is evident in the first two lines when he says “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (1-2). The sense of admiration continues throughout the poem, but the first two lines sets up the tone. The poem’s overall vibe is endearing. Through Shakespeare’s comparison of the person in the poem to a summer’s day, it is conveyed that he feels some type of affection towards this other person. The tone of the poem reveals that the overall poem is focusing on the narrator’s admiration and love for the person’s beauty. In Moss’s poem this inference about Shakespeare’s piece is reinforced through Moss’s narrator’s appreciative tone. Although Moss’s piece is less complex and serious than Shakespeare’s, the tone is still of the same nature. Moss is stating in layman’s terms that the beauty of the person is somet...
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...Moss’s poem the conclusion is less powerful, but he goes straight to the point by saying, “After you’re dead and gone, / In this poem you’ll live on” (lines 13-14). Moss’s poem holds the same deep feelings about this person’s beauty, but he states it in a less complex way.
With the use of personification, diction, tone, and theme, Shakespeare was able to construct a poem where the narrator was admirable of his significant others’ beauty. This interpretation of Shakespeare’s poem “Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day” was supported with the analysis of the tone, theme, and diction. In addition, Moss’s poem, “Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day” helped reinforce some of the conclusions made about the interpretation of the poem because of Moss’s use of simple language. Through this poem, Shakespeare has created the idea that beauty can live forever despite nature.
When he writes "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she, belied with false compare." (lines 13-14) in the final couplet, one responds with an enlightened appreciation, making them understand Shakespeare's message that true love consists of something deeper than physical beauty. Shakespeare expresses his ideas in a wonderful fashion. Not only does he express himself through direct interpretation of his sonnet, but also through the levels at which he styled and produced it. One cannot help but appreciate his message of true love over lust, along with his creative criticism of Petrarchan sonnets.
Shakespeare, William. "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?." 1894. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. By X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 6th ed. Boston: Longman, 2010. 501. Print. Compact Edition.
One of the poems that William Shakespeare wrote is called “That time of year thou mayst in me behold.” It is also known as William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. This Sonnet is viewed as being comprised of metaphors, which capture the struggle of life. Life in which there is an end to everything but beauty within it. The speaker within this poem is one that reflects on his life and how nature is closely connected with his journey. In order to understand the theme of the poem, the reader must first recognize and understand the three major metaphors within the poem.
Shakespeare’s themes are mostly conventional topics, such as love and beauty. Nevertheless, Shakespeare presents these themes in his own unique fashion, most notably by addressing the poems of beauty not to a fair maiden, but instead to a young man: ‘‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (book). Shakespeare points out that the youth’s beauty is more perfect then the beauty of a summer day. It is also “more temperate”, in other words more gentle, more restrained whereas the summer’s day might have violent excesses in store. At first glance of sonnet 18, it’s pretty much certain that one would think Shakespeare is referring to a woman, not a man. The idea of a man describing another man with such choice of words is always seen with a different eye. Several even stated that Shakespeare is homosexual. Whichever the case may be, Shakespeare painted beauty in the most original matter. He dared to do what everybody else didn’t, or maybe feared to, and accomplished his goal with flying colors. Besides, in his sonnets, Shakespeare states that the young man was made for a woman and urges the man to marry so he can pass on h...
For centuries mankind has unsuccessfully attempted to define beauty. Greek philosophers, including Plato, tried to define beauty as if it were as simple as any other law in nature. However this cannot be so because the idea of what is beautiful has varied throughout cultures and the ages. In the 1800s women who were pale and rather plump were considered objects of desire; but in today’s society, desirable women are slender and tan, among other things. The fact is that today, beauty is as unobtainable as it is indefinable. All of today’s supermodels, as seen in millions of advertisements, have been modified, airbrushed, and photoshopped. Women desiring this beauty have turned to various sources of false remedies, spending thousands of dollars, in hope that they too can be beautiful. The media has twisted and warped our ideal definition of beauty into something that does not exist naturally and is simply inaccessible.
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, also known as “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” represents and discusses the love and beauty of his beloved. Also, the speaker refers to his love more sweet, temperate, and fair than all the beauty that he can see in nature. He also speaks how the sun can be dim and that nature’s beauty is random: “And often is his gold complexion dimm’d / And every fair from fair sometimes declines” (6-7). At the end of the poem the speaker explains that they beauty of the person that is being mentioned is not so short because, his love with live as long as people are still reading this sonnet. The beauty of his beloved with last longer than nature, because although nature is beautiful flowers and other things still have to die: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see / so long lives this and this gives life to thee” (13-14) Also, the speaker is comparing his love to a summer’s day, but does not really say anything specific or that the qualities given to his beloved are more superior to a summer’s day, which can allow the reader to understand that his beloved can stay young, beautiful, and never going to die.
In this sonnet, Shakespeare is creating a mental picture of spring and summer to compare against his loved one. He uses the fact that fine and beautiful days are the creation of nature, and nature is constantly changing all the time. Fine days never stay the same: 'rough winds' or the sun obscured by clouds, 'and often is his gold complexion dim'd', can easily mar a fine day. He talks about these negative factors of change in the first eight lines, and Shakespeare then uses these ideas to claim that his loved one will always remain untarnished, speaking of how 'thy eternal summer shall not fade' and how his loved one has lasting qualities that will outshine death: 'Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade' These thoughts come to a confident, final... ... middle of paper ... ...
The simplified argument is an attempt by Shakespeare to persuade his subject to produce an heir. and therefore retain his beauty through his child, to avoid wasting. such a beautiful image. The opening quatrain through use of imagery focuses on the devastating effect that time has on beauty. The opening line deals with time in terms of the seasons, specifically winter.
...derstanding of time passed and time that remains allows one to become comfortable with such circumstances and express a love that must soon retire.The metaphors that represent the theme throughout the poem are similar in the way they all show the devastating and destructive factors of time. Further more, they provide a discourse surrounding the issue of mortality. With anticipation increasing from beginning to end, Shakespeare is able to demonstrate a level of comfort surrounding the inevitable. The continual imposition of death on life is a universal experience. Autumn turning into winter, day turning into night, and a flame diminishing entirely all illustrate this. The increase in intensity of associated color with metaphors mimics the intensity of the ending. As the end draws increasingly near, it becomes undeniable and provides the catalyst for the lesson of love.
This poem speaks of a love that is truer than denoting a woman's physical perfection or her "angelic voice." As those traits are all ones that will fade with time, Shakespeare exclaims his true love by revealing her personality traits that caused his love. Shakespeare suggests that the eyes of the woman he loves are not twinkling like the sun: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1). Her hair is compared to a wire: "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (3). These negative comparisons may sound almost unloving, however, Shakespeare proves that the mistress outdistances any goddess. This shows that the poet appreciates her human beauties unlike a Petrarchan sonnet that stresses a woman's cheek as red a rose or her face white as snow. Straying away from the dazzling rhetoric, this Shakespearean poem projects a humane and friendly impression and elicits laughter while expressing a truer love. A Petrarchan sonnet states that love must never change; this poem offers a more genuine expression of love by describing a natural woman.
Both poems “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” by William Shakespeare, and “If thou must love me” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appear to share some things in common. Both share the same theme and tone of love. Shakespeare emphasizes more on “beauty” in his poem by comparing his admirer to that of “summer’s day” (1). He went further to indicate the level of love and beauty of his admirer by using this phrase, “thou art more lovely and more temperate” (2), showing that the person is more beautiful than the “summer’s day” because “summer’s day” might fade away. Both poems are sonnets (fourteen line poem), divided into three quatrains, with Shakespeare’s ending with a couplet. They a...
...the reader’s or listener’s experience. Finally, the entire poem can be boiled down to one large metaphor between a summer’s day and whoever Shakespeare wrote the poem about, though the metaphor is incomplete due to the summer day failing in comparison. These are just a few of the techniques used in this poem, there are many more that make it great. William Shakespeare does an amazing job of drawing the reader in.
In William Shakespeare’s sonnet “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” the audience is introduced to a poem in which he himself goes into depth about the person he is infatuated with. The author does not give any type of hints telling the audience who the poem is towards because it can be for both male and female. That’s the interesting part about William Shakespeare’s work which is to second hand guess yourself and thinking otherwise. Making you think and think rational when you read his work. The sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summers day” is one of his most famous and published poem. Shakespeare’s tone of voice at the commence of the poem is somewhat relaxed and joyful because he is going on talking about the person he is intrigued by. Throughout the passage Metaphors, similes and imagery can all be found in the poem itself
Shakespeare addresses his first 126 sonnets to the same fair man. Sonnet 18, by far one of the most famous of Shakespeare's sonnets, was written to illustrate his love and adoration for the man. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate" (18.1-2). The first few lines of this sonnet place vivid images in the readers mind about a beautiful and sweet tempered person. Most readers be...