Sonnet 18

   This sonnets starts off with a question.  Should the speaker compare the subject to a summer's day?  During Shakespeare's time comparing the subject to a summer's day was common.  Italian sonnets were often themed like this.  Shakespeare could be creating a parody of an Italian sonnet and maybe other poems of his time.  However, instead of comparing the subject to a summer's day, the speaker tells how the subject surpasses the beauties of summer.  According to the speaker, the subject is more lovely, more temperate, and more eternal than summer.  The second quatrain reveals how summer's beauty decline like most else.  Then the last quatrain tells how the subject will stay eternal.  After reading up to this point, the question that comes to my mind is how can a human be more immortal than summer?  The last line of the quatrain and the couplet reveal that the sonnet keeps the subject alive while people can still read the sonnet.  The theme to this sonnet seems to differ from the sonnets before it.  The themes prior to this sonnet encourage procreation.  This sonnet focuses more on the beauty of the sonnet.  If one believes in the Young Man theory, this could be the speaker becoming obsessed with the subject.  In the original print of the sonnet, instead of a period at the end of the last line, there is a comma.  One could argue that it was a misprint which was a common occurrence.  Others say that the comma was intentional for the purpose of creating an eternal feel to the sonnet.