Explain the theme employed by Shakespeare in Sonnet no 18 and establish your arguments with quotes from the text.

 Explain the theme employed by Shakespeare in Sonnet no 18 and establish your arguments with quotes from the text.

Answer - Sonnet 18 is one of the best known and most loved of all 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare. 

The main theme of Sonnet 18 is eternal love, beauty and immortality. In Sonnet 18 Shakespeare compares his love to a summer’s day (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?). But in the second line the poet says that the youth is more perfect than a summer day. More temperate, this phrase can be referred as more gentle in nature. “Thou art lovelier and more temperate” means that he is saying how his beloved is charming, and the poet also mentions how constant his love is for his beloved. Then, in the following lines of the poem, the narrator talks about how the summer is very short and doesn’t last that long. The poet also says that the sun is too hot and often covered by clouds on some days. 

However, summer’s beauty cannot exist throughout the year, but the love for the beloved one will always exist. ‘But your youth shall not fade’ and ‘Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess. In these couplets, the poet wants to explain to us how everything beautiful will at times loses its beauty but the young person will never lose the beauty and stay beautiful forever. 

Overall the poet wanted to tell that the young person’s love is so powerful that even death is unable to curtail it, and also love lives on for future generations to admire through his words through the sonnet itself. Shakespeare, in the final verse, explains that his beloved’s eternal beauty will remain as long as there are people alive to read this sonnet.

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