About Sonnet 18
K081141141 刘艳
KEY WORDS: Beauty Transiency Summer
ABSTRACT: Sonnet 18 is one of the poems of Shakespeare’ssonnet, the age of Shakespeare is in the Elizabeth time of England, which is aworld of love poems, As a result, writing sonnet has become the modern works.Then Shakespeare’s sonnet is become the outstanding works in this age. Hissonnet is totally different from others which is known as affectation, emptyand weak, as we can say meaningless, this poem is 18th of hissonnets, which is dedicated to young nobleman, This long poem encompasses abrilliant satire on contemporary English society through the experiences of ayoung noble, with great literature value.
TEXT: Not only because of the ingeniousstructure, rich vocabulary of it, but also because it is a reflection of humanismin Elizabeth age made it has a high literarystatus, and is enjoyed the reputation of unique. I will appreciate and analyze sonnet 18 from 3 aspects.
Firs, as the background of it and thelife of Shakespeare. William Shakespearewas born to John Shakespeare and mother Mary Arden some time in late April 1564in Stratford-upon-Avon. There is no record of his birth, but his baptism wasrecorded by the church, thus his birthday is assumed to be the 23 of April. Hisfather was a prominent and prosperous alderman in the town ofStratford-upon-Avon, and was later granted a coat of arms by the College ofHeralds. All that is known of Shakespeare's youth is that he presumablyattended the Stratford Grammar School, and did not proceed to Oxford orCambridge. He was said to be a teacher, Shakespeare entertained theking and the people for another ten years until June 19, 1613, when a canonfired from the roof of the theatre for a gala performance of Henry VIII setfire to the thatch roof and burned the theatre to the ground. The audienceignored the smoke from the roof at first, being to absorbed in the play, untilthe flames caught the walls and the fabric of the curtains. Amazingly therewere no casualties, Sonnets make up of majority of Shakespeare’s poetry work.Shakespeare did not originate the sonnet form. The basic structure of thesonnet arose in medieval Italy, its most prominent exponent being the EarlyRenaissance poet Petrarch. The appearance of English sonnets, however, occurredwhen Shakespeare was an adolescent (around 1580). Both Edmund Spenser andPhilip Sydney, among others, worked in this form a decade or so beforeShakespeare took it up in the early 1590s, possibly seeking to exploit theongoing popularity of the sonnet among literary patrons of the day. What wecall Shakespearian sonnets today have different forms with the Italian sonnetsin that the Shakespearean sonnets end with a rhymed couplet and follows therhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. In 1609, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Never beforeImprinted” was published, which collected 154 sonnets commonly thought to bewritten between 1593 and 1599. Concerning the content, these sonnets canroughly be categorized into three groups: sonnet 1—17 addressed a young man’slove of a lady; sonnet 18—126 describe the young man’s relationship withanother young male poet; sonnet 127—154 portrait a mysterious dark-haired lady.Given this and the intimacy of the themes broached by Shakespeare in thesonnets, it is natural that scholars would entertain a search forautobiographical sources, and that this search would focus on three identityissues: (1) who is the young man to whom Sonnets 1-126 are addressed? (2) whois