Shakespeares Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is part of a group of 126 sonnets Shakespeare wrote that are addressed to a young man of great beauty and promise. In this group of sonnets, the speaker urges the young man to marry and perpetuate his virtues through children, and warns him about the destructive power of time, age, and moral weakness. Sonnet 18 focuses on the beauty of the young man, and how beauty fades, but his beauty will not …

…whom Shakespeare is writing. The octave also tells of how great the man’s beauty is compared to everything else that is beautiful. In the sestet, the poem tells about how the man’s beauty stays alive and out lives all other beauty. The poem is written in iambic pentameter. Shakespeare makes use of much symbolism and many other figurative devices in this poem that contribute and emphasize to the overall theme of the poem.