A sonnet of celebration in perspective
What is perhaps Shakespeare's best-known poem in his sequence of 154 sonnets is not as straightforward as it may seem
It addresses not a woman but a young man
Catalonia Today wants to celebrate Shakespeare by reproducing sonnet XVIII on this page. This poem is certainly the most famous in Shakespeare's sequence of sonnets and may even be the most famous lyric poem in English. When read as a single poem on its own, its meaning seems pretty clear: a celebration of the physical and spiritual qualities of the beloved, a theme with a long tradition in Renaissance poetry. The poet praises the summerlike beauty of another person and insists that the beloved's “eternal summer” shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet. In other words, the beloved will be forever immortalised thanks to the poet's verse. There's no detailed description, in this case, of the beauty of the beloved's hair, eyes, lips, and so on. The subject is described in more general terms, as someone who is “more lovely and temperate” than a summer's day, that is, someone without the unpleasant extremes of summer's occasional winds or heat.
But when we read the poem in the sequence of Shakespeare's collection of 154 sonnets, its meaning turns out to be quite different from what readers usually assume. For one thing, we soon discover that the sonnet is addressed not to a woman but to a young man of higher social standing. The older poet has already –in the preceding 17 sonnets of the sequence– praised the beauty of the young man and encouraged and urged him to produce a child to preserve that beauty. The concluding couplet of sonnet XVII makes that clear: “But were some child of yours alive that time, / You should live twice – in it and in my rime”. The combined effects, as it were, of sexual procreation and being present in the poet's “rhyme” would secure the young man's immortality. But sonnet XVIII comes at a moment when the poet seems to have received a response of reciprocal affection and he now feels triumphant in the expression of his feelings of self-fulfillment. No more talk now of procreation. He feels “chosen” as a person and as a poet and is eager to demonstrate his talents to the youth, so that, the very famous first line could be read not only as conventional praise but also as the poet showing off his abilities. Shakespeare scholar, Neil Rudenstine, has recently suggested that what the poet is really saying is: “I can do whatever you prefer: shall I write something that has to do with spring, or would you like a comparison to a summer's day”.
Sonnet XVIII signals a moment of optimism and self-confidence in the sequence. A celebration of praise for a love not tainted yet with traces of Time or Death. Love is celebrated but has not been really tested. As the sonnet sequence develops, Shakespeare introduces and explores the effects of a series of betrayals or transgressions by the two main characters and their own uneasy relationship with a Dark Lady. Platonic or ideal love has to confront the adversities of time, the fading of beauty, and the urgencies of lust. In the end, Shakespeare's sonnets –read as a whole– become one of the most memorable, deep, and moving reflections on the nature of human love ever written.