Shakespeare, William - Shall I compare thee?

William Shakespeare

We don't know much about William Shakespeare's private life; in fact, what we know is based on a few public records. Shakespeare was probably born inStratford-upon-Avon on 26th April 1564, but someone says that he was born on the 23rd, which is also thought to be the day of his death. He was the eldest son of eight children and his father was a successful tradesman. His wife was Anne Hathaway and they had three children Susanna, Judith and Hamnet.
William Shakespeare's birth isn't certain because it's not registered anywhere. In fact, the teacher Martino luvara thinks that Shakespeare wasn't born in Stratford-upon-Avon, but instead he was born in Messina, where Michelangelo Florio was born on 23rd April 1564. But this isn't the only coincidence.
His mother's name was so particular, Guglielma Crollalanza, the perfect translation of the name William Shakespeare. Michelangelo Florio was a heretic boy, so he escaped abroad, where he fell in love with Giulietta. Sadly, she committed suicide because both their families were against their relationship. This reminds the 'Romeo and Juliet' tragedy, one of the most popular of Shakespeare's work.

In 1588 Michelangelo went to England, where there was also hiscousin's son William, but he passed away at a young age, Maybe Michelangelo decided to change his name to William for this reason or simply he decided to translate his mother's full name. In any register the name of William Shakespeare doesn't appear, but instead Michelangelo Florio does.
Finally, another coincidence could be Shakespeare's work "Much ado about nothing', which could be related to Michelangelo's work Tantu scrusciu pi nenti.
As far as his education is concerned, he attended a grammar school, where he studied rhetoric and classical culture. He moved to London in 1584, where he was accepted into one of the acting companies and there, he distinguished himself as an excellent writer. Later he found the support of a patron, the Earl of Southampton, because the London theatres were closed due to the plague
Shakespeare became the main playwriter of the most successful company in London, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. At the end of the 16th century, his company built the Glock theatre, and then they changed the name to the King's Men. At the age of 52 he died and then he was buried in the local church, named Holy Trinity Church.
Shakespeare wrote around 37 plays for the theatre and 154 sonnets. He wrote different types of works: historical plays, comedies, tragedies (these especially in the latter part of his life, that he spent in retirement in his native town).
In 1623 some of his friends published an edition of 36 plays, called the first follo: a collection of plays by Shakespeare, both poetic and dramatic, that also included comedies, tragedies and histories. Shakespeare is known for his language. He invented over 1700 words by changing nouns into verbs or verbs into adjectives, or with the use of prefixes and suffixes, and creating new phrases, likeheart of gold, contained in the work Henry V, then cold comfort and break the ice, which means do or say something to relieve tension and it's contained in his work the Taming of the Shrewd.
His sonnets were probably written during the last decade of 16th century, but were first published in 1609, in a small quarto edition about the size of a modern paperback. These
sonnets were dedicated to W.H. who was probably William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, because the First Folio was also dedicated to him.
Since we don't know too much about his life, we don't know neither whether his poems express his feelings. In fact, he tries to distract the reader from a possible relationship between himself and the two mysterious figures: the Fair Youthand the Dark Lady.
The Fair Youth, there's a theory that Shakespeare's love sonnets were not written for his wife, but rather for a young man (from the first sonnet to sonnet n. 126). The most frequent themes are: beauty and its decay, competition with a rival poet, despair because the lover is not present and destructive power of time. In the first eighteen sonnets, Shakespeare tries to convince the man to marry. He gives us an exploration of gender and sexuality,
the Dark Lady, is instead an irresistibly attractive woman and we find this mysterious character from sonnet 127 to sonnet 154.
Shakespeare is one of the most important Elizabethan poetsand he's known for his traditional but at the same time experimental sonnets. The sonnet was already two centuries old, but he changed its structure and invented new metaphors, adapted to the changing politic and economic. It's important that one of the two lovers is a male.
He changed the rhyme scheme and the layout of the Petrarchan sonnet. Maybe his experience as a dramatist gave him the possibility to describe in the most complete way the huge component of human emotions.

Shall I compare thee?

Shall I compare thee is the 18th sonnet, written by Shakespeare. It's composed by three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter (10 syllabus). It's full of archaic forms, nouns in Elizabethan English:
thee; you (object pronoun); thou art: you are, hath: has; thy: your, verb in est: you owe, you grow
The sonnet is addressed to a young man and it discusses the nature of physical beauty. It deals with a comparison between a summer's day and a young man, the Fair Youth and it begins with a rhetorical question, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?". In line 2, we see that the addressee is better than a summer's day, because he's more lovely and temperate, while
summer is too hot and short. The line ends with temperate, that creates an oxymoron with rough, in the following line.
The "eye of heaven" represents the sun (personification) and sometimes it shines too hot and its golden aspect dimmed, because the light fades due to the clouds. Nature's changing course cannot be controlled by men and here poetry plays an important role, because it makes the Fair Youth's beauty eternal.
The third quatrain begins with but, creating a turning point. Here Shakespeare explains why the beauty of the young man is destined to be eternal and it introduces the theme of the couplet. As long as men will read his lines, then the beauty of his lover will exist eternally.

The sonnet can be divided in two parts:
1. From line 1 to line 8, concerning nature and its laws.
2. From line 9 to line 14, concerning the power of art (poetry) and its symbolic order.