SHALL I COMPARE

1
SHALL I COMPARE

• William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 18, 1609

By Giulia Zentilin
2

• Translation

• 1Posso paragonarti a un giorno
  d'Estate?2Tu sei più amabile e più
  tranquilla.3Venti rudi scuotono i teneri
  germogli di Maggio.4E il corso dell'estate ha
  fin troppo presto una fine.5Talvolta troppo
  caldo splende l'occhio del cielo,6E spesso la
  sua carnagione dorata s'oscura7E d'ogni cosa
  bella la bellezza talora declina,8spogliata per
  caso o per il mutevole corso della natura.9Ma la
  tua eterna estate non dovrà svanire,10Nè perder
  la bellezza che possiedi,11Nè dovrà la morte
  farsi vanto che tu vaghi nella sua
  ombra,12Quando in eterni versi al tempo tu
  crescerai13Finchè uomini respiraranno o occhi
  potran vedere,14Queste parole vivranno, e ti
  daranno vita.

• 1 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
  2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate.3
  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,4
  And summer's lease hath all too short a date.5
  Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,6 And
  often is his gold complexion dimm'd7 And every
  fair from fair sometime declines,8 By chance or
  nature's changing course untrimm'd9 But thy
  eternal summer shall not fade10 Nor lose
  possession of that fair thou ow'st11 Nor shall
  Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,12 When
  in eternal lines to time thou grow'st13 So long
  as men can breathe or eyes can see,14 So long
  lives this, and this gives life to thee.

3
Structure

• Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean
  sonnet

• Three quatrains followed by a couplet
• The characteristic rhyme scheme is
• abab cdcd efef gg.

It belongs to a collection because the title
resumes the beginning of the work.
4
Role of love in this sonnet

• William Shakespeare with this sonnet would
  emphasize
• The stability of love and its power to
  immortalize the poetry and the subject of that
  poetry is the theme.
• Several centuries of amorist literature, and is
  the archetypal apex of love poetry.

5
To sum up

• In the sonnet the author compares his beloved to
  the summer, and argued that his beloved is
  better.
• Nobody knows the name of the mysterious man, he
  is called the fair youth and we know only the
  initials of his name W.H.
• In the first and the second quatrain the author
  underline the imperfection of the summer its
  temperature and its length. The author try to
  bring to light the many failings and short
  falllings that a summers day can have.