Let's start it easy - with one of the most known Shakespeare sonnets. Below you get the original text (on the left) and its more modern version (on the right).
| Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? | Shall I compare you to a summer's day? |
| Thou art more lovely and more temperate: | You are more lovely and more constant: |
| Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, | Rough winds shake the beloved buds of May |
| And summer's lease hath all too short a date: | And summer is far too short: |
| Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, | At times the sun is too hot, |
| And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; | Or often goes behind the clouds; |
| And every fair from fair sometime declines, | And everything beautiful sometime will lose its beauty, |
| By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; | By misfortune or by nature's planned out course. |
| But thy eternal summer shall not fade | But your youth shall not fade, |
| Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; | Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess; |
| Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, | Nor will death claim you for his own, |
| When in eternal lines to time thou growest: | Because in my eternal verse you will live forever. |
| So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, | So long as there are people on this earth, |
So long lives this and this gives life to thee. So long will this poem live on, making you immortal.
First things first: in my humble opinion it is still a poem about love of a kind- you won't compare your accountant or your lawyer or your boss to a summer's day, will you? Well, no unless you are in love with them...my point exactly.
At first glance the poem is simply a praise of the beauty (rather internal than external but eventually, I suppose, it doesn't matter) of the beloved; the author states that even summer can't compare as it tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat; the beloved one is always mild and temperate (an Internet acquaintance perchance?). In other words he/she is perfect. A bit idealistic approach but sometimes an infatuation can make you that blind. Ok, what's next?
The stability of love and its power to immortalize the poetry and the subject of that poetry is the other theme.
Here things become more complicated and interesting as well. The poet's answer to his love interest's perfection is to ensure that he/she remains forever in human memory, saved from the decay and oblivion that accompanies death. He achieves this through his verse, believing that, as history writes itself, his friend will become one with time. You can also say that sonnet 18 do not explicitly encourage the young man (or woman) to have children to preserve his/her beauty - it is included in the final couplet, which reaffirms the poet's hope that, as long as there is breath in mankind, his poetry too will live on, and ensure the immortality of his muse. So love might make you immortal but only if you love a poet or a writer and he/she decides to immortalize your humble person in his/her work. ;p Yes, you are very pretty and your character is incredibly sweet but I am a Pigmallion to your Galatea...isn't it a bit selfish statement? Well...selfish love is also love of a kind and artists tend to be rather self-centred, don't they?
After that short paragraph, you shouldn't be surprised that not everyone is willing to accept the role of Sonnet 18 as the ultimate English love poem.
As James Boyd-White puts it:
What kind of love does 'this' in fact give to 'thee'? We know nothing of the beloved’s form or height or hair or eyes or bearing, nothing of her character or mind, nothing of her at all, really. This 'love poem' is actually written not in praise of the beloved, as it seems, but in praise of itself. Death shall not brag, says the poet; the poet shall brag. This famous sonnet is on this view one long exercise in self-glorification, not a love poem at all; surely not suitable for earnest recitation at a wedding or anniversary party, or in a Valentine. (142)
As if a scholar might persuade anybody not to recite such a well-known, elegant poem when occasion arises. Note that James Boyd-White refers to the beloved as "her", but it is now almost universally accepted by scholars that the poet's love interest is a young man. Well, they had some hard proof I believe - if you want to find out more just consult this link to Wikipedia where some options are presented and names given.
Now let me know what you think. Would you like me to do it more often or do you find it rather pointless?
:-)
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