Just as Shakespeare’s plays offer dramatic worlds complete in themselves, by turns full of Romance, Comedy, and Tragedy, so too do his Sonnets present perfectly-crafted expressions of experience. Each only 14 lines, the Sonnets are exquisite mediations on love and art itself.
None is more famous than Sonnet 8, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” We have discussed its particular lyricism here; but as we are properly on the threshold of summer, the words have all the more impact. Children and teachers alike will now be counting the days to vacation, and so will find special meaning in this sonnet. When Shakespeare writes of the sun as “the eye of heaven,” how vividly it brings to mind the long and lazy days of the season. And the “darling buds of May” — even if shaken by “rough winds” — capture the promise of summer blossoms.
Certainly all would agree that “summer’s lease hath all too short a date”(!). Of course, Shakespeare explores the qualities of the season in order to juxtapose the vagaries of nature with the constancy — the “eternal summer” — of his beloved.
But how well too the strength of his imagery captures our broader, and equally eternal, love affair with summer itself.