Shakespeare’s sonnet 18- Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
Shakespeare’s use of diction, design, form and tone affect the manner in which the reader and the hearer perceive the poem and understand the argument put forward by the poet which states that comparing his beloved’s beauty to a summer’s day is not a correct comparison. Shakespeare’s choice of words and imagery provides the reader with extensive ground to diverge between two genres of poetry. It is unclear whether sonnet 18 is a love poem or it is in fact a poem about poetry, the poem is expansive in its meaning. The sonnet is structured in an argumentative form whereby the first quatrain introduces and idea, the second quatrain discusses the idea and the final quatrain expresses the poet’s views on what true beauty entails. The use of punctuation in the poem affects how the argument moves form one quatrain to the other. The tone of the poem shifts as the argument progresses. Sonnet 18 is extensive in its meaning; it may be easy to conclude that the poem is the poet’s declaration of love to his beloved. But it could also be argued that the poet’s intention for writing the sonnet may be to express that his poem will live on as long as men have eyes to see it. If the poem is defined as a love poem then the intended effect of the poem to the hearer would be to emphasize that her beauty is eternal unlike a summer’s day. Her beauty will last for eternity but the sun will not have the same pleasure. The mere fact that the poem is written down consolidates the poet’s idea that his beloved’s beauty is eternal. The poet makes it clear to the reader in the rhyming couplet that “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee”