FURTHER READING
Forker, Charles R. “Sonnet 12.” In The Greenwood Compan-
ion to Shakespeare, vol. 4, edited by Joseph Rosenblum,
1089–1095. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2005.
Michael Young
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 15 (“When I
consider every thing that grows”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) In this SONNET, the poet begins
to immortalize his patron in verse since it seems that
Time is going to take him away before any worldly off-
spring can be born to preserve his heritage upon the
earth. The fi rst quatrain (ll. 1–4) presents the poet
pondering existence and the shortness of mortal life,
even likening the brevity of life to a play on the stage (l.
3). The second quatrain (ll. 5–8) introduces an elabo-
rate simile comparing the stages of plant growth to the
stages of human life: youthful vigor, adult decline, and
oblivion in old age. The last quatrain (ll. 9–12) empha-
sizes how the speaker views the addressee—as one
who risks squandering their brief youth to the ravages
of unrelenting time. In the concluding COUPLET, the
speaker declares himself at war with time: He will
assuage the temporal ravages inevitably suffered by the
addressee by grafting the immortal verses of the poem
to his memory.
This sonnet extends the poet’s continuous request:
that his patron produce an heir so that his beauty will
not be forever lost. Until such time, however, the
speaker adopts the tactic of immortalizing the addressee
in verse. This situation builds up to a climax in the
famous lines of Sonnet 18.
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
Joseph E. BeckerShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 18 (“Shall I
compare thee to a summer’s day?”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 18 is an ENGLISH SON-
NET structured around three arguments—or parts of
arguments—in three quatrains followed by a conclud-
ing COUPLET. It begins with the speaker searching for
appropriately beautiful things to which to compare the
beloved. The speaker questions whether one might be
“a summer’s day?” (l. 1), but then realizes that the lover
is not only “more lovely” but “more temperate” (l. 2),
more even in personality and temper. The fl ower buds
that appear in May can be destroyed by a strong wind,
and summer itself does not really last that long.
The second quatrain leaves the lover to consider the
natural progression of nature. Summer, lovely as it can
be, is sometimes too hot; the “eye of heaven” (l. 5)—
the sun—shines too brightly. Alternatively, though,
the sun is dimmed, and summer lacks the expected
brightness. In fact, too-hot or bright summers—or too-
dim and cloudy ones—have an inevitable, negative
effect on nature, causing that which began as “fair” or
beautiful to “decline” in fairness (l. 7). In other words,
things we expected to be beautiful in nature during the
summer—fl owers, shrubs, the landscape as a whole—
can sometimes be unattractive because of an overly hot
summer that burns plants and fl owers, or because of
an overly dim, cool, or rainy summer that either pre-
vents fl owers from blooming or washes away their
beautiful petals as soon as they appear. This decline of
beauty usually happens by chance: It was too hot or
too cold. Or, as the poet points out in the metaphor of
the sailing ship, decline in beauty can happen because
Nature changed her course and did not bother to trim
her sail in the process. In order to change course while
sailing, the captain needs to be sure to trim his sail
carefully so that the ship does not wander all over or,
worse, capsize. The poet indicates that those unhappy
and unbeautiful summers can come about either “by
chance” or because Nature, for some reason, is not
paying attention to her sailing and allows extreme
weather to happen.
The third quatrain returns to the beloved while con-
tinuing the comparison to nature. The speaker indi-
cates that the beloved is superior to nature because his
or her “eternal summer” (l. 9) will not fade. In addition
to being the victim of sun or rain, the beauty of sum-
mer is also the victim of time. No matter how beautiful
a summer is, it will still turn to autumn. No one, not
even Nature, can make it be summer always. The
speaker of this SONNET, however, is implying that the
beloved’s “summer” (his or her time of especial
beauty)—unlike that of nature—will not fade nor will
the “fair” (the beauty that is part of the beloved) be364 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 15