Bacaron, Cheska P.

STYLIST L85

Dr. Antonette Talaue-Arogo

A Formalist Analysis on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

Celebrated as the most well-known classical Shakespearean sonnet, “Sonnet 18”

prevails among William Shakespeare’s 154 short lyrical poems in terms of popularity for it

serves as a great access point towards the enigmatic complexities of Shakespeare’s literary

works, specifically the uncanny relationship between the author, his subject, and his

audience. “Sonnet 18” in particular, is generally interpreted as a love poem directed towards a

young man. However, scholars argue still that the sonnet is, in fact, open to many

interpretations. In line with this, the beauty of the poem does not only reside in its

equivocality, but also in the poem – the form – itself. Its popularity can also be attributed to

the fact that its form is a perfect example of what a sonnet should be. The further reading of

William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” will explore on the structure and the sound devices of the

poem.

“Sonnet 18” contains 14 poetic lines which is a classic feature of any Shakespearean

sonnet. In particular, the words “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (1. 1) form a

single line of poetry which is well-known to be the first poetic line (Pla 2) of “Sonnet 18”.

These lines then form four stanzas; three quatrains and one couplet. A Shakespearean sonnet

establishes the theme or a problem in the three quatrains followed by a resolution in the

couplet (Neely 375). The general understanding of this particular sonnet interprets the first

quatrain as Shakespeare comparing his love to a summer’s day, describing his love as “more

lovely and more temperate” (1. 2). This particular line shows the characteristic of poetic
language which has the “intentional violation of the norm of the standard” (Mukarovsky 43).

Instead of using the standard term lovelier, the author opted to use the term more lovely for its

musicality. This particular sound device called repetition will be further elaborated along the

discussion. The second quatrain further elaborates on the comparison between the

Shakespeare’s love and a summer’s day, displaying a more obvious preference towards the

former through describing the less appealing qualities of summer as “too hot” (2. 5), and

unpredictable. The third quatrain then poses a slight shift towards the author’s opinion about

summer, describing it as “eternal” and “shall not fade” (3. 9), which then implies that while

summer is immortal, Shakespeare’s love is not. With this, a problem arises. The couplet,

which is the last stanza of the sonnet, then proposes a rather comforting resolution that “so

long as men can breathe, or eyes can see” (4. 1), Shakespeare’s love becomes immortalized

through the written sonnet itself. Again, the structure of “Sonnet 18” shows the flow of a

theme/problem taking shape in the three quatrains, and then to be concluded by a couplet to

provide a resolution. Another notable feature of “Sonnet 18” is the verse which Gerard

Manley Hopkins defines as “speech wholly or partially repeating the same figure of

sound” (qtd. in Jakobson 358-359). Therefore, verse, also commonly known as a line in a

poem that is written in meter, is a crucial feature in establishing the poem’s musicality.

What makes a Shakespearean sonnet particularly striking is its musicality. “Sonnet

18” makes use of a number of sound devices; the most basic therein is the rhythm which is

also known as the beat in a line of a poem (Pla 4). Each unit of rhythm is called the foot of

poetry, most commonly known as the syllable. In English poetry, there are essentially five

basic rhythms of varying stressed and unstressed syllables, and these patterns are called meter

(Earlham College) which is also explicitly termed as verse design (Jakobson 364). The
meters are iambs, trochees, spondees, anapests, and dactyls. In this case, Shakespearean

sonnets are known to have iambic pentameter, and “Sonnet 18” is a perfect classical example:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Though art more lovely and more temperate. (1. 1-2)

The text above shows the stressed syllables in boldface and here. Note that among the

five basic rhythms of stressed and unstressed patterns, three have two syllable feet; iambic,

trochaic, and spondaic. The iambic follows a /unstressed/ /stressed/ pattern all throughout the

end of the line. Considering the first two lines of “Sonnet 18”, both possess the stress on the

even syllabus, treating the odd ones as weak beats. There is an accentual pattern that operates

“primarily with the contrast of syllables” (Jakobson 360). This pattern can be observed all

throughout the sonnet which then shows that the meter is iambic, and considering that each

line has 5 two-syllable feet, this makes the sonnet an iambic pentameter. Another one of the

distinct feature of Shakespeare’s sonnets is the uniform rhyme scheme. Rhyme, according to

Jakobson, is not just “based on a regular recurrence of equivalent phonemes or phonemic

groups” (367). In other words, rhyme could not be oversimplified into just relating to sound

for it holds “semantic relationships between rhyming units” (367). “Sonnet 18” follows the

rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Aside from the end rhyme, a term defined by Pla as

“similar sounds found at the end of words that finish different lines” (4), the sonnet also

makes use of internal rhyme which can be observed along the lines “so long lives this, and

gives life to thee” (4. 14) and “…every fair from fair sometime declines” (2. 7). Shakespeare

also makes use of assonance, a term that refers to the repetition of vowel sounds within a

word (Pla 5), which is very notable in the third quatrain and the first line of the couplet:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breath, or eyes can see, (9-13)

The sound devices that are also evident in the sonnet are consonance and alliteration. Both

sound devices focus more on the repetition of the consonant sounds within the line and the

beginning of the word (Pla 5), respectively. The following reading of selected stanzas from

the sonnet aims to identify the consonance (marked in underline) and alliteration (marked in

boldface) from the text:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st. (5-12)

Lastly, Shakespeare made use of repetition in the sonnet. This sound device is evident

all throughout the poem. The aforementioned word more for example, was used in the line

“more lovely and more temperate” (1. 2). This line shows a perfect example of what

Jakobson stated about poetic function, that it “projects the principle of equivalence from the

axis of selection into the axis of combination” (358). Going back to the basic modes of

arrangement used in verbal behavior: selection and combination. In the line above,

Shakespeare had the other choice of using the word lovelier, that is, in accordance to standard

language. However, the author opted to use more lovely in order to create a certain rhythm -

to draw attention to itself – to emphasize its poetic function. Repetition is also used to add

emphasis, which is evident in the couplet of “Sonnet 18” wherein the starting phrase so long

was used twice as a concluding statement of the sonnet.

William Shakespeare’s literary works have always been objects of numerous literary

studies and his collection of sonnets is no exception. “Sonnet 18”, in particular, not only

earned its popularity due to its frequent appearance in Shakespearean sonnets class

discussion, nor is it just because of its representation of what a perfectly structured sonnet

should be. Its fame is perhaps brought by its enigmatic equivocality that touches on different

aspects of life, its mysterious complexity resonates towards its readers making his works still

alive and pulsating in the forewalls of a Literature class’ classrooms and in the works of

modern day scholars even up to this day.

Works Cited

A Feeling for Harmony: The 3-Semester Music Theory Course for Earlham College. Earlham

College, 5 November, 2017, http://legacy.earlham.edu/~tobeyfo/musictheory/Book1/

FFH1_CH2/2A_PoeticMeter.html

Jakobson, Roman. "I960." Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics."." Style in language:

350-377.

Mukařovský, Jan. "Standard language and poetic language."Chapters from the history of

Czech functional linguistics (1970).

Pla, Elsa. "ELEMENTS OF POETRY."

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 18.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds.

Stephen Greenblatt et al. Vol. 1. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.

1063.