1

Lesson 6
Elizabethan Poetry: Sonnet 18
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
1. Contrast the addressee and the summer’s day based on their inherent attributes;
2. Choose lines that exemplify metaphor, personification and metonymy; and
3. Interpret poetic lines to gain a deeper understanding of the addressee in the sonnet.
Activity 1. Summer’s Day in Words
Directions: Fill in each box with an adjective that describes a summer’s day

Summer’s Day

Overview
When the young sixteenth-century courtier Sir Thom Wyatt was traveling in Italy, he
became captivated by sonnets of Petrarch. Upon his return to England War translated some of
these and then wrote a number of original sonnets. Thus was introduced into English literature a
verse form that has been very successfully employed by masters like Shakespeare, Milton, and
Wordsworth, as well as tried with varying results by many lesser English poets.

The sonnet is a compact fourteen-line poem with a strictly regulated structure that invites
imitation. Its meter is iambic pentameter, and its rhyme scheme varies within a few well defined
patterns. If the poet is writing an Italian sonnet, he will have one rhyme scheme in the first eight
lines (octet) and another in the last six lines (sestet). In the first part he expresses his idea or
thought, and in the second he comments or elaborates on it. In the English sonnet the pattern is
usually three quatrains with a couplet at the end. However, few English poets have adhered
strictly to any particular rhyme scheme, and we have Wyatt, Sidney, Surrey, and Shakespeare all
their own personal variations. The Elizabethan poets were fond of writing sonnets written to
one person or on one’s theme. Shakespeare wrote some sonnets to a " Lady” and others to a
friend. Spenser's Amor his courtship of the lady who became his w Sidney's Astrophel and Stella
was addressed to married someone else. Love was the main th or despair a frequent mood, in the
sonnets of Shakespeare all making sonnet sequences? on one general Sonnets to a mysterious
"Dals TS Amoretti celebration became his wife, while Sir Paul addressed to a lady who late le
main theme, with sadness sonnets of the Elizabeth.
Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty
 2

The identity of the persons to whom Shakespeare addressed his more than 150 sonnets
remains a mystery. They are written on two main themes, friendship and love, and in them we
find Shakespeare revealing a great deal about himself. In his sonnets, just as in his plays,
Shakespeare rises far above his contemporaries. His handling of the quatrains and couplet make
the English sonnet flexible and musical. He gives to his themes a universality that lifts them into
the realm of lasting truth. In these four sonnets we see a wide range of thought and mood. The
first three play upon the characteristics and values of friendship—its unchanging perfection and
the comfort it pro vides for discontent and regret. The fourth extols the constancy of genuine
love.

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Willia m S hakespeare
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 ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee

Activity 2. You and the Summer’s Day

Directions: Fill in the chart with five attributes that differentiate the addressee from the summer’s
day.

Addressee Summer’s Day

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty

 3

Activity 3. Spot the Figures of speech

Directions: Complete the chart by supplying it with lines in the sonnet that exemplify each figure
of speech.

Metaphor Personification Metonymy

Mastery Test
The Addressee in Focus
Directions: Read each questions carefully. Then, write your answer in the space provided.
1. How will the person addressed in the poem remain the same always? (10 points)
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

2. The third quatrain favors the addressee more than a summers’ day. How is this shown in the
said quatrain (lines 9-12)? (10 points)
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty Compiled by JHCSC-STE Faculty