Translate Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee To a Summer's Day" into contemporary speech

Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?
by William Shakespeare

STRUCTURE: Sonnet XVIII is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet. It consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet, and has the characteristic rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets typically discuss the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but sonnets can be written about any topic.

Iambic Pentameter
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets and most of his plays in Iambic Pentameter. It is a specific pattern of beats to a line. Iambic pentameter consists of five “feet” – short-long, short-long, short-long, short-long, short-long.

An iambic “foot” is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written like this:
da DUM

A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:
da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /
Shall I com- pare thee to a Sum- mers day?
Thou art more love- ly and more temp- per- ate.
Rough winds do shake the dar- ling buds of May,
And Sum - mer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Assignment: What techniques can we use to translate Shakespearean language into today’s standard English? Answer the following questions to find out!

1) What words do you know in today’s English that can help you understand Shakespearean English?
a. Define “temperate” ____mild temperature, showing moderation or self-restraint______________
b. Define “darling” ___affectionate form of address____________
c. Define “complexion” _____color of your skin______________
d. Define “decline”___reject, get lower, go down__________
e. Define “untrimmed” – remember that the prefix, “un,” means “not.” You may not find “untrimmed” in the dictionary, but you will certainly find “trim.” You may already know what “trim” means! What does it mean? ______________________
f. What literary element is used in the phrase “Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade?”___Personification____
g. What is “this” that is referred to in the last line of the poem? _________________________________________________ (this cannot be answered until you have completed your translation!

Assignment: Using your notes above, your intelligence, and the FOOTNOTES, translate this poem into modern Standard English.

Sonnet XVIII Your Translation
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate1:
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 complexion2 dimmed,
And every fair3 from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed.4
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st5,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.

- William Shakespeare, about 1609
___________________________________

FOOTNOTES

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."