Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet is, perhaps, one of the best-known sonnets contained in the English literary canon. It is a conventional Shakespearean sonnet that explores conventional themes in an original way. With characteristic skill Shakespeare uses the sonnet to exalt poetry and his beloved.
The first quatrain introduces the primary conceit of the sonnet, the comparison of the speaker’s beloved to a summer’s day. In the first line the speaker introduces the comparison of his beloved to a summer’s day. The speaker then builds on this comparison when he writes, “Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (2) because he is describing his beloved in a way that could also describe summer. When he describes “rough winds [that] do sh
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