What is the Central Idea of the Sonnet

Central Theme of Shakespeare’southward Sonnet No. 18 (shall I compare thee To a Summer’southward Day)

According to Francis Meres, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, “mellifluous and love-tongued” Bard of Avon who equals to the Roman Ovid, is a master artist of sonnet writing. Out of 154 of such Shakespearean sonnets, the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a handsome youth, his fair friend. The first 126 sonnets reveal “a story of brief intoxication by a friendship with a young aristocrat of quick disillusion; of a renewal of friendly relations on a quite different ground, when Shakespeare was economically independent of a gradual disuse of the relationship”.
Shall I compare Thee to a Summer’due south Day (sonnet No. 18),”
which ranks among the near famous honey poems of all time tin can likewise be read from the above perspective.

          The poet in this sonnet eternalizes the dazzler of the youth – the beauty with which his fair friend is adorned. In fact, Shakespeare likewise preoccupies the Elizabethan theme of love and time. He wages state of war with fourth dimension and he wants to create a poetic dimension where the youth will remain immortal.



The poem begins with a rhetorical question –
shall I compare thee to a summer’s 24-hour interval?
Here the pronoun ‘thee’ is obviously ‘youth’ which forms a parallel to his fair friend. At present equally the poem progresses the respond to this question is elaborately given to the states. Though the poet identifies youth with the cute manifestation of nature, yet the youth is more than “lovely and temperate”. He considers that a comparison between the dear youth and a summer twenty-four hours would exist in appropriate and inadequate. Firstly, he feels that ‘more lovely and temperate’ is the course of beloved youth than the summertime day. Secondly, summer’s beauty is inconstant as the sun sometimes is too hot or sometimes dimmed by clouds. More over, its dazzler is ephemeral, whereas the beauty of beloved youth is eternal. The supereminences of all earthy dazzler is stated in a beautiful line –
“And every off-white from fair some time declines”.
With the passage of time fairness of fair object loses its brilliance and brevity. Amidst these turnovers dazzler of youth and his love for that beauty would withstand the blows of times.

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          In the third quatrain Shakespeare the youth, will non lose his beauty even though the ravaging power of time would put everything inside his compass. The very memory of his fair friend identical every bit youth volition remain a fresh for always as he with his juvenile class will be eternalized in the poet’due south verses. The terminal couplet reads as:


“So long every bit men can breathe, or eyes can encounter,


So long times this, and this gives life to thee”

           Thus the sonnet ends in a defiant couplet where the poet says every bit long as the world endures; his poesy will survive and volition reanimate and recreate the youth. The youth has been immortalized through the poet’s eternal verse.

            While the sonnet may provide little conclusive information about Shakespeare’s life and his relationship with the off-white friend, it does provide insight into him as an creative person. In fact Shakespeare’s Sonnet no. eighteen is highly metaphorical. The sonnets derive its artistic unity from its exploration of the universal man themes of fourth dimension, death, change, love, animalism, and dazzler. Thus,
Shall I compare Thee to a Summer’due south Mean solar day (sonnet No. 18)
tin also be read as the great dramatic poem.

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What is the Central Idea of the Sonnet

Source: https://ardhendude.blogspot.com/2011/10/central-theme-of-shakespeares-sonnet-no.html

Originally posted 2022-08-05 10:54:10.

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