Shall I compare thee questions and answers study questions notes

Study Questions and Answers of Sonnet No. 18 “Shall I compare thee” by William Shakespeare:-

Question:-

Who is being compared to a “summer’s day” in the sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day”? And by whom?

Answer:-

The poet’s friend is being compared to a summer’s day. There is a doubt about the identity of this friend-he may be William Herbert or Henry Wriothesley or Third Earl of Southampton.

Here the poet, Shakespeare compares his friend to a summer’s day.

Question:-

Why is the friend more ‘lovely and temperate’ than the summer’s day?

Answer:-

The summer’s day, which is the summer season is very short lived. Sometimes the summer’s storms wither up the beautiful buds that bloom in May-the sun which is sometimes too hot is often overcast with the dark clouds. But the friend’s beauty is eternal and constant. So it is more fascinating than the summer’s season.

To His Love

(Sonnet no. 18)

by William Shakespeare

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 dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:—

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.