The Sonnets – Sonnets 18-33 – “ Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

The Sonnets – Sonnets 18-33 – “ Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Although Shakespeare’s Sonnets 18-126 still predominately deal with the Young Man, from Sonnet 78 to Sonnet 86, we see the appearance of the Rival Poet, so I will deal with these poems separately. Sonnets 18-77 deal with the power of poetry to give immortality and defeat death. I will deal initially with Sonnets 18-33. I will put Patrick Stewart's reading here first since he also reads a brief introduction to this new sequence of sonnets.
https://twitter.com/SirPatStew/status/1247312842321248257

I will start with a commentary on one of Shakespeare’s most well known and most loved sonnets, Sonnet 18 ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?


Thou art more lovely and more temperate:


Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,


And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:


Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,


And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,


By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;


But thy eternal summer shall not fade


Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;


Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,


When in eternal lines to time thou growest:


So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,


So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”

The poet/speaker starts Sonnet 18 with a question “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” addressed to the object of his devotion (who we assume from reading the previous sonnets to be the young man). The language of this sonnet is largely unadorned with poetic devices and effects. The absence of run-on lines and the presence of punctuation marks at the end of most lines forces the reader to pause and take in most lines as complete thoughts in themselves. Line 2 states that the poet praises the young beauty as even “more lovely and more temperate…” than a summer’s day. The poet then extends the comparison to summer through pointing out that summer has the extremes where “rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” and that summer (at least in England) can be very short “…summer’s lease hath all to short a date…”

The second quatrain moves almost entirely onto summer and the imagery of the sun which described metaphorically as “the eye of heaven”. The poet then uses the personification inferred in the metaphor of the sun as being the “eye of heaven” and then more fully personifies the sun when he describes the sun as having a “gold complexion”. The poet laments that summer is too short and the sun is “dimm’d” and declines into autumn.

The third quatrain of the sonnet then moves back to comparing the sun and nature to the youth’s beauty and suggests that the youth’s fairness or beauty is unlike summer because it will last forever as stated in the words “Thy eternal summer shall not fade…” This can also be seen as more than a comparison since the poet almost has morphed or metamorphosed the youth into summer itself or the embodiment of beauty itself. The poet then states that the youth will never “lose possession of that fair thou owest…” suggesting that the poet himself is making the beauty of the youth and thus making the youth himself immortal. The poet ends this quatrain when in line 12 “When in eternal lines to time thou growest…”, the poet uses a grafting metaphor (grafting the youth to time) whilst playing with the double meaning of the word lines to again suggest that his poem and its “eternal lines” will make the beauty and the reputation of the beauty of the youth grow.

The final rhyming couplet seems to have a great faith in the timelessness of his verse and ends with the affirmation that so long as humans can see and breath that his verse will live on too and give life to the muse that inspired this very sonnet. Ironically, the poem starts off praising the poet’s muse but ends up in self-gratification praising the poet and his love poem itself. It seems that although “death shall not brag”, in fact the poet will and does.

Let’s move onto Sonnets 19-33. Sonnet 19 almost challenges Time to “bring it on” since the poet thinks that his verse and the youth can battle time at its own game and win. I have two readings by Patrick Stewart of this sonnet. One from 2012
https://vimeo.com/44720865
Another from isolation during the COVID epidemic in 2020
https://twitter.com/SirPatStew/status/1247663137006006278 

Sonnet 20 is definitely directly addressed to the young man and suggests that although his body was definitely made to love women that the poet thinks that women can have the body of the youth while the poet will have his love. Patrick Stewart did not do a reading of this sonnet because he found it too sexist and derogatory to women. Sonnets 21 and 22 almost play with and comment on the sonnet form itself while Sonnet 23 uses a simile common to Shakespeare, that of an actor. It ends with a beautiful rhyming couplet that suggests that meaning and love is revealed by reading between the lines:

“Oh learn to read what silent love hath writ!

To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.”
Here is Patrick Stewart reading Sonnet 21.
https://twitter.com/SirPatStew/status/1248059279405432832

Sonnet 23 with Patrick Stewart:
https://www.facebook.com/patrickstewart/videos/520585398624907/


Sonnet 24 uses the metaphor of painting to have the poet praise the youth by claiming that his poetry has painted a portrait of the youth which is only beautiful because the poet like the painter only draws what they see. 
Sonnet 24 with Patrick Stewart:
https://www.facebook.com/patrickstewart/videos/851940731987712/

In Sonnet 25, the poet is thankful that he loves and is beloved. Here is Patrick Stewart reading Sonnet 25.
https://www.facebook.com/patrickstewart/videos/635007697279829/

In Sonnet 26 the poet says that he is not boasting or using his writing skills but genuinely loves and is devoted to the youth. Patrick Stewart reading Sonnet 26:
https://www.facebook.com/patrickstewart/videos/685639052191058/

In Sonnet 27, the poet evokes strong description and imagery of a poet writing late at night and ends with the beautiful evocative couplet:

“Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.”

Sonnet 28 can be coupled with Sonnet 27 and continues the sense of a writer writing late at night but gives the sense of the struggle a writer feels when trying to describe the youth in his verse. In Sonnet 29, the poet initially bemoans his state and the torture which his short-comings and wishes bring but ends by saying that the poet feels rich and wealthy when he remembers the youth. Sonnet 30 continues to look at the poet’s contemplations and ends with concluding that while the poet thinks about his friend, “All losses are restored, and sorrows end.” 
Here is patrick Stewart readings Sonnet 29 & 30:
https://www.facebook.com/patrickstewart/videos/681915002583722/

While in Sonnet 31, the poet reflects on the fact that all his lovers he sees in the image of the youth he loves. Patrick Stewart reads it here:
https://www.facebook.com/patrickstewart/videos/1686728528136257/

In Sonnet 32, the poet says that his poems should not be read by the youth for their dubious quality but for the love in the poems the poet shows for his friend.
Patrick Stewart again:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=218230876125373

Sonnet 33 is part of a set of three poems when the poet has been hurt by a friend. Sonnet 33 is a beautiful sonnet where the poet comes back to comparing his love to the sun, but unlike in Sonnet 18, there is the suggestion that the poet has lost or is losing the love of his youthful friend.

“Full many a glorious morning have I seen 


Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,


Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 


Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; 


Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 


With ugly rack on his celestial face, 


And from the forlorn world his visage hide,


Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:


Even so my sun one early morn did shine 


With all triumphant splendor on my brow; 


But out, alack! he was but one hour mine, 


The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. 


Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; 


Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.”
Patrick Stewart reads it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs9zPHMd4Xg