24 Shakespeare on Love

These two sonnets by Shakespeare present two very different perspectives on the love poem.  Keep in mind that Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnets follow a specific form and pattern.  The form of the poems are fourteen lines containing three quatrains (four-line stanzas) and a rhyming couplet (two-line stanza). The poems are in iambic pentameter, which means that each line is made up of five iambs (a combination of one stressed and one unstressed syllable).  The iambic pentameter gives the poems their regular cadence.

The sonnets also follow the pattern of an argument.  In the first quatrain, the poet introduces the argument or problem.  In the second quatrain, the argument or problem is complicated or extended.  In the third quatrain, the argument or problem is reversed, and in the final couplet, there is a twist or surprise.  Keep this pattern in mind as you consider these two love poems. – Ryna May

Sonnet 18

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.

Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

   As any she belied with false compare.