Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Audio IN italiano

https://www.shakespeareitalia.com/shakespeare-sonetto-018/

Video english

https://youtu.be/qUV7kE4A8hc?si=ZcMMPQ58Ar-Ayi6F

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Dovrei paragonarti a un giorno d’estate?
Tu sei ben più raggiante e mite:
venti furiosi scuotono le tenere gemme di maggio
e il corso dell’estate ha vita troppo breve:
talvolta troppo cocente splende l’occhio del cielo
e spesso il suo volto d’oro si rabbuia
e ogni bello talvolta da beltà si stacca,
spoglio dal caso o dal mutevol corso di natura.
Ma la tua eterna estate non dovrà sfiorire
né perdere possesso del bello che tu hai;
né morte vantarsi che vaghi nella sua ombra,
perché al tempo contrasterai la tua eternità:
finché ci sarà un respiro od occhi per vedere
questi versi avranno luce e ti daranno vita.

The Sonnets
In his late 20s and early 30s, Shakespeare wrote a number of sonnets, 154 of which were published together in 1609. The sonnet is a 14-line poetic form, most likely descending from Sicilian popular song, that was ubiquitous among major Italian poets throughout the 1300s. It was popularized in England by the 317 sonnets written by the Italian poet Petrarch. The variation of the form Shakespeare used—comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg—is called the English or Shakespearean sonnet, although others had used it before Shakespeare. This different structure allows for more buildup of a subject or problem than the Italian/Petrarchan form and uses just two lines to conclude or resolve the poem in a rhyming couplet. (Learn more about sonnet forms here). Shakespeare’s decision to not use the Petrarchan sonnet, which requires a poet to find four different endings that rhyme with one another, meant he didn’t need to be especially acrobatic in making his rhymes and could more consistently use them in meaningful ways. In Sonnet 12, by matching herd with beard (a closer rhyme in his day), Shakespeare subtly pairs these two “bristly” things.

Contrary to some assumptions, Shakespeare’s sonnets don’t depict just romantic love, and when they do, it’s not always in its purest and most joyful form. Of course, some of the most famous sonnets, such as “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (from Sonnet 18), “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” (from Sonnet 116), and “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun” (from Sonnet 130) contain some of the most quoted passages about love in the English language. But Shakespeare’s sonnets also articulate love’s tragedy (“That thou among the wastes of time must go,” from Sonnet 12), its sadness (“How like a winter hath my absence been / From thee,” from Sonnet 97), its despair (“I all alone beweep my outcast state, / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,” from Sonnet 29), and the hurt of unrequited love or betrayal (“Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.” from Sonnet 139).