Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer Day (William Shakespeare) - Critical Appreciation

Posted by anjila | Posted in | Posted on 8:15 AM

"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" is a Shakespearean sonnet that develops one dominant idea. Shakespeare compares a lady with a beautiful summer day in this poem. He finds her beautiful and immortal like his own sonnet. This poem has three quatrains and a couplet. It follows the rhyming pattern abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The poet develops the ideas in the three quatrains and the conclusion of the poem is embedded in a couplet.

The poet compares a lady, probably his beloved, to a summer's day which is all pleasant. The summer's day is lovely and pleasant but she is more than that. The poet also accepts the transience of pleasure and beauty of the natural things and season. The buds of May are not free of wind's touch. Similarly summer's lease is very short.

The sun is sometimes very hot and its golden complexion becomes dim. The beauty of every beautiful thing decreases and is ultimately spoiled naturally or accidentally. But the external summer's beauty he finds in her beauty will never disappear nor will she lose the beauty she has. The death will not be proud of taking her because she has been immortalized in the lines of his verse. She may die physically, but her beauty will remain alive in the lines of verse.

As long as the human race remain on earth and people can read lines of the poems, she will be remembered and will be immortal. Thus, the main concern of the poem is immortalizing beauty through the work of art, especially poem.

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