Literary Interpretation: Symbolism and Metaphor in Poetry

In college you will be reading poems by Shakespeare, William Blake, Matthew Arnold, and others. Let's look at one of the most famous Shakespeare poems, Sonnet XVIII: "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?"

1) Can you read the roman numerals? What number sonnet is it?

2) Read the sonnet. What is it about? What metaphors does it use, and what do they mean?

3) You will recognize footnotes when reading this poem. We saw footnotes and discussed them when we were doing research for our papers. Use the footnotes to figure out the meaning of this poem.

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1 In the time of Shakespeare, "temperate" carried both outward and inward meanings (externally, a weather condition; internally, a balanced nature),


2 as did the word "complexion,” in line six, which can have two meanings: 1) The outward appearance of the face as compared with the sun ("the eye of heaven") in the previous line, the first meaning is more obvious, meaning of a negative change in the person’s outward appearance, or 2) The second meaning of "complexion" would communicate that the beloved's inner, cheerful, and temperate disposition is sometimes blotted out like the sun on a cloudy day.


3 The word “fair” can be translated as “lovely,” or “beautiful.”


4 The word, "untrimmed" in line eight, can be taken two ways: First, in the sense of loss of decoration and frills, and second, in the sense of untrimmed sails on a ship. In the first interpretation, the poem reads that beautiful things naturally lose their fanciness over time. In the second, it reads that nature is a ship with sails not adjusted to wind changes in order to correct course. This, in combination with the words "nature's changing course", creates an oxymoron: the unchanging change of nature, or the fact that the only thing that does not change is change. Both change and eternity are then acknowledged and challenged by the final line.


5 "Ow'st" in line ten can also carry two meanings equally common at the time: "ownest" and "owest". Many readers interpret it as "ownest", as do many Shakespearean glosses ("owe" in Shakespeare's day, was sometimes used as a synonym for "own"). However, "owest" delivers an interesting view on the text. It conveys the idea that beauty is something borrowed from nature—that it must be paid back as time progresses. In this interpretation, "fair" can be a pun on "fare", or the fare required by nature for life's journey. Other scholars have pointed out that this borrowing and lending theme within the poem is true of both nature and humanity. Summer, for example, is said to have a "lease" with "all too short a date."