25 pages • 50 minutes read
William ShakespeareSonnet 18
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Ephemerality of Passion
Shakespeare’s use of a season as an analogy prepares the reader for the sense that the speaker is experiencing something that will not last. In Line 4, this sense of ephemerality becomes clear: “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” meaning what is present and true now will not be so in a few months. In Lines 5-7, the speaker describes how the excitement derived from love and beauty often calms. What is “[s]ometime too hot” (Line 5) often becomes “dimm’d” (Line 6) and “sometime declines” (Line 7). The poet’s usage of the adverb “sometime” in Lines 5 and 7 describes how infatuations can be especially passionate, but people can also entirely lose interest in a beloved. On the other hand, what initially appears to be “gold” (Line 6)—a metaphor for early idealizations—“often” (Line 6) fades. With the use of the adverb “often,” there is an expression of greater certainty, as lovers seldom share as much interest in each other during the later stages of a romance as they did at the beginning.
The Eternal Power of Love
Though summer is ephemeral, it is also perennial. Like the experience of love, it too shall return and with it, one experiences all the familiar feelings. The poet shifts from a meditation on the ephemeral—epitomized by both summer’s short lease and the poem’s focus not only on the season but on only a single day within it—to “thy eternal summer” (Line 9). This phrase reveals either a belief in the beloved’s unwavering goodness or in love’s undiminished potential depending on the reading of the poem. Whether the speaker is referring to a beloved or to the experience of love, it or they will not “lose possession of that fair that ow’st” (Line 10)—even after death. The speaker’s insistence that the beloved’s fairness will not only never diminish but will “grow’st” (Line 12) gives less credence to the speaker’s focus on a particular person instead of on a feeling or idea, for only these can develop with time and remain sustaining life forces.
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By William Shakespeare
