25 pages • 50 minutes read
William ShakespeareA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is a poem in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet—that is, a 14-line rhyming ode. While Petrarch’s odes to a real or imaginary “Laura” focused only on his obsessive idealization of a woman whom he could not have, and probably only desired expressly for her unattainability, Shakespeare’s ode has an unnamed object. It is also possible that the poem is less focused on an actual person than it is on a feeling or concept.
Further, as earlier noted, the form of the sonnets differs between Petrarch and Shakespeare. The former form is arranged as an octave (eight lines) and a sextet (six lines) with an ABBA-ABBA-CDCDCD or CDEEDE rhyme scheme, while the latter is often arranged as three quatrains (four lines apiece) and a concluding couplet (two lines) with an ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG rhyme scheme. This arrangement has—at least in part—to do with the language in which the poems were written as rhymes differ in varying languages.
The Shakespearean, or Elizabethan, sonnet was more intellectually inspired than the sonnets—from both Italy and France—preceding it.
By William Shakespeare
All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
As You Like It
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2
Henry IV, Part 2
William Shakespeare
Henry V
Henry V
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 3
Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
King John
King John
William Shakespeare
King Lear
King Lear
William Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Measure For Measure
Measure For Measure
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare