Textuality » 4A Interacting

SDri - Shall I compare
by SDri - (2010-11-22)
Up to  4 A The Renaissance and the sonnet formUp to task document list

Shall I compare


From the layout we understand that it is a Shakespeares sonnet because it is divided into an octave and a sestet.
The title of this sonnet makes me understand that it takes part of a collection.
The sonnet starts with a rhetorical question, where there is a comparison between the "fair youth" and a summer's day. In the first stanza the poet doesn't pose the problem because he makes an argumentation. In the first stanza the poet also lists some negative aspects of summer: it is short, the sun is too hot...
Shakespeare wants to make us understand that the young person is better than a summer day.
In the third quatrain the young person becomes the subject of the sonnet. The poet underlines that with this sonnet he will be eternal.
In this sonnet Shakespeare resorts to two different semantic fields (areas): nature and economy.
Nobody knows who is the young person whom Shakespeare talks about.
Shakespeare has an archaic way of writing, the language of this sonnet dates back to the past.