Shakespeare’s Not So Bad!
“Sonnet 18”
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Kate Hendrix
Warren East High School
English II
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A piece of paper
A pen or pencil
A dictionary or dictionary.com on your phone
You’ll need…
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Think about a typical love poem or song. What
are some of the images and comparisons that the
poet/songwriter uses to describe his/her love?
List the details of that sense in a chart that looks
like the one below. Fill in the chart with details
that appeal to the different senses.
Sense
Sight
Touch (keep it clean)
Taste
Smell
Hearing
Prereading
Details
Write a general statement about the
overall feeling created by a perfect
summer day.
 Now think of a person you care
about. How are this perfect
summer day and this person alike?
How are they different?
(Remember…think
FIGURATIVELY…)
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PreReading
“Sonnet 18” Analysis
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READ THE POEM ALOUD
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
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 owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18
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What season of the year is dealt with in this sonnet?
The quatrain contains an analogy that compares
______________ to ___________.
Based on images from your prereading chart, explain why
this is an effective comparison in a complete sentence.
What is the denotation of temperate in line 2? How is this
word appropriate to describe both a day in summer and a
person?
What is the denotation of darling (line 3) in this context?
Explain the metaphor in line 4, “summer’s lease”
Paraphrase the first quatrain.
Quatrain 1
1
2
3
4
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:
In line 5, what is “the eye of heaven”?
 What is the antecedent of the pronoun his in line 6?
 How could “the eye of heaven” be dimmed?
 How is the sun further personified in line 6?
 Explain two possible meanings of the word fair in
line 7.
 For each meaning you identified, explain how
something that is fair might “decline.”
 Paraphrase the second quatrain.
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Quatrain 2
5
6
7
8
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;
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What word signals a shift in the poem?
What word in line 1 is directly related to the word thy in
line 9?
The speaker states that “thy eternal summer shall not fade.”
Explain this metaphor.
How is Death personified in line 11?
Explain the Biblical allusion in line 11.
What are the possible meanings for the word lines in line
12? Which meaning is most relevant? Explain.
Paraphrase the 3rd quatrain.
Quatrain 3
9
10
11
12
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
Paraphrase the final
couplet.
What does the final couplet
reveal about the power of a
literary work?
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Final Couplet
13
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
14
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Theme
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The theme of a work, in
this case a poem, is its
implied view of life and
human nature. It is the
generalization about life
at large that the piece
leads the reader to see.
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In ________________(title), William
Shakespeare _____________________
(reveals, explores, illustrates, shows,
etc.) _______________________ (key
aspect of the theme) and how it
__________________________ (What
does it show us on a universal level?).
Fill in the above statement
for theme.