1.
UNDERSTANDING SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

2.
Sonnet 8

3.
Music to hear, why hear’st
thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war
not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov’st thou that
which thou receiv’st not
gladly,
Or else receiv’st with
pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of
well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do
offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide
thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts
that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string,
sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by
mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child
and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one
pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song,
being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: “Thou
single wilt prove none.”
4
8
12

4.
Sonnet 8 by William Shakespeare empathizes with the subject, who is against the idea of
marriage. The young man, the subject of the sonnet, is chided for choosing to be single.
The poet uses comparisons with music and marriage, likening the "true concord of well-
tuned sounds" to a marriage. It is appropriate that Sonnet 8, a sonnet of musical descant, is
placed as the 8th sonnet, since an "eight" is a "true concord."[Shakespeare does this to
emphasize the beauty and importance of having a family. The sonnet emphasizes the
notion that the subject will not reach true harmony if he does not settle down with a wife
and children. His life will be in discord if he chooses to continue being single. It is among
the string of procreation sonnets written by Shakespeare. The procreation sonnets are
sonnets 1-17. All share the theme of urging a young man to marry and have children,
insisting they are key to a harmonious life.
In line 6, "Unions" can have two different meanings: that which is blatant to marriage and
the other referring to harmonies. The Oxford English Dictionary does not give this as a
definition, but the closeness of union to unison keeps the musical connotation present in
the reader’s mind. Then in line 8, "the parts that thou shouldst bear" still keeps the idea
that music and family are one by saying a part that is played in the family, or with a musical
instrument in an orchestra. "resembling sire and child and happy mother" in line 11 alludes
to the Holy Family, Mary, Jesus, and Joseph as they were depicted as a happy family in
multiple church paintings during the time this sonnet was written. The poet warns the
subject against staying single in the last line, "‘Thou single wilt prove none.’" As a single
person, a man will accomplish nothing.

5.
William Shakespeare

6.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
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 complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st 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.

7.
This question is flattering in itself as a
summer’s day is often associated with
beauty.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

8.
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Shakespeare, however, explains that his
love’s beauty exceeds that of the summer
and does not have its tendency towards
unpleasant extremes:

9.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date
It should be noted that at the time the sonnet was written,
England had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar and
May was considered a summer month. In the above quote,
Shakespeare describes the fragility and short duration of
summer’s beauty. The use of the word ‘lease’ reminds us of
the fact that everything beautiful remains so for a limited
time only and after a while its beauty will be forcibly taken
away.

10.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
Shakespeare states that the sun, which he
personifies and refers to as ‘the eye of heaven’,
can be too hot or blocked from view by the
clouds unlike his ‘more temperate’ love.

11.
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
The repetition of the word ‘fair’ highlights
the fact that this fate is inescapable for
everything that possesses beauty.

12.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his
shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”
Suddenly (though it was foreshadowed a bit in line
8), the tone and direction of the poem changes
dramatically. Moving on from bashing summer and
the limitations inherent in nature, the speaker
pronounces that the beloved he’s speaking to isn’t
subject to all of these rules he’s laid out.

13.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
(As long as there are humans alive on this
planet Your life and beauty will live on through
this sonnet)
Shakespeare’s self-assured claim makes it
possible to argue that the purpose of the poem
was not actually to pay a beloved person a
compliment but rather to praise oneself for
poetic skill.

14.
Speaker: The author
Tone: Endearing , deep devotion for
lover
Addressee: The young man

15.
• “The darling buds of May” –
the beautiful, much loved
buds of the early summer
• “The eye of heaven” – Sun

16.
Metaphor:
“Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day?”

17.
Metaphor:
"Thou art more lovely and more
temperate”

18.
Anaphora:
“So long as men can breathe, or
eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives
life to thee.”

19.
Iambic pentameter
the most common metrical pattern in poetry
written in English, alternates weak unstressed
and strong stressed syllables to make a ten-
syllable line (weak strong/weak strong/weak
strong/weak strong/weak strong).

20.
Love
 Literature and Writing
 Time
 Man and the Natural World

21.
This poem is about a man who is at the end of his life. The narrator illustrates his old age in the first stanza: “When
yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/Upon those boughs which shake against the cold” (lines 2-3). He describes
the end of fall and the beginning of winter in these lines. This “time of the year” (line 2) is when living things begin to
die during the winter. Like the trees that slowly lose their leaves, the narrator is on his last leg of life.
The trees that have few or no leaves left on them are similar to the image in the fourth line: “Bare ruined choirs,
where late the sweet birds sang.” Both the bare, ruined choirs and the trees are places where there once was life.
This stanza is important to setting the sonnet with concrete, natural images, which allow the reader to understand
that the narrator is aware that he will soon expire.
The first stanza makes an analogy between the narrator’s old age and the time of year just before winter. The second
stanza similarly describes his old age through natural images; the second stanza, however, compares his condition to
a time of day: “In me thou seest the twilight of such day/As after sunset fadeth in the west,/Which by and by black
night doth take away,/Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest” (lines 5-8). The narrator is perceived as a tiny bit of
light left in the sky before the darkness erases him. In the first and second stanzas, his death is described as eventual.
Yet, in the first stanza, his death could have taken days (or weeks) to come; his death in the second stanza seems
more urgent. He describes that he is going to be taken by the night (death), but within an hour or longer.
The third stanza, however, does not promote a temporary, metaphorical death. It describes a dying flame is
extinguished by that which was its youth. This death seems much more literal, urgent and direct. It could be analyzed
to show that the narrator’s coming death is a result of the way he lived as a youth, yet I am not sure about this idea.
What is important to know about this stanza is that it makes his death not only seem more urgent, but more realistic.
The couplet at the end of the sonnet is a direct statement to the youthful man (identified by “his” in the third stanza)
that he is speaking to. These final lines state that because the narrator death is inevitable, others will love him more.
This sonnet ends much stronger than it begins. Because of the structure of the sonnet, the narrator seems farther
away the more one reads it. His death may be metaphorical, but the urgency of the sonnet doesn’t give the reader a
chance to find out.

22.
Analysis:
The sonnet's structure and its content back up each other. Examples:
- The three quatrains form one unit: They deal with what real love is not (cf. first and
third quatrain) and what it is (cf. second quatrain).
- A turning-point after the first quatrain is indicated by the exclamation "Oh no!" (I 5). It
introduces the speaker's explanation of what real love ~ like after he has described what
it is not.
- The couplet is separated from the rest of the sonnet with a full stop in l.12. It contains
the essence of the sonnet, the conclusion: If the speaker's comprehension of love is
wrong, he has never written anything and no one has ever loved anyone. As this it not
possible, it follows that his comprehension of love must be right.
• Shakespeare employs imagery to clarify his message.

23.
SONNET 116

24.
SONNET 130

25.
REFERENCES
1.www.slideshare.net
2.Wikipedia
3.www.cummingstudyguides.com