Pathetic Fallacy and Sonnet 18

In William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, also known as ‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?’, the speaker, presumably Shakespeare, uses Summer to compare his friend to express his love for his friend and desire to immortalise this friendship. It is a sonnet with the rhyming pattern of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. But despite it being a sonnet, the topic was not romantic love, which is what the subject of a sonnet would typically be about, but about love that comes from friendship.

There is a tone of musing found in the start of the sonnet, as it starts with a question, ‘Shall I compare thee…’ and it introduces pathetic fallacy as a significant element of the poem. A summer’s day is considered to be the most beautiful day to be had, and comparing the friend to that beautiful summer’s day tells us how highly the speaker regards his friend, and this is further reinforced in line 2, where the friend is not merely as good as a summer’s day, but better, ‘more lovely…more temperate’, testifying the friend’s steadfast love for him.

However, summer does not last forever, nor is it perfect. Summer is described as a ‘lease’ in line 4, where at some point, Summer will have to give way to Autumn, then Winter, and the perfect summer’s day may be ruined by rain or ‘rough winds’, or it may be ‘too hot’. It is also subjected to ‘chance’ and ‘nature’,