Let’s take it a line at a time.
“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?” – Shakespeare was of course famously indecisive – “To be or not to be?”, “This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill; cannot be good:”, “Darling you’ve got to let me know, should I stay or should I go?’. This dithery nature is woven through the very fabric of the majority of his sonnets. Sonnet 18 is no exception, and it starts with the epistemic nature of his very first word.
“Shall” was Shakespeare’s favourite modal verb, though Marlowe suggested he try “Must I” to give the impression that the narrator was a petulant and reticent teenager. Elizabethans were mad for comparisons. There was even famously a market in Camden set up purely so Elizabethans could come along, pay a groat and start comparing things. Shakespeare’s ponderings on whether he should compare ‘thee’ (we’ll come to that thorny issue in a moment) to a Summer’s day was a tad more abstract than what was available for comparison at the market – the relative girth of a couple of parsnips, the smoothness of two leather hides, or the roundness of a farmer’s daughter in comparison to the roundness of a cox’s orange pippin.
The ‘thee’ in the sonnet has of course been the subject of great debate amongst all Shakespeare scholars over the past four hundred years. When they were first published, Shakespeare’s sonnets were dedicated to a Mr. WH. The prime suspects for this mysterious figure have always been considered to be either William Herbert, a man who refused to marry the Lord Chamberlain’s cat, and thus was supposedly the target of an elaborate plot of Shakespeare and his Patron that was akin to the sting in the first Oceans 11 film, in which the dedication in the book of sonnets was merely one facet. Other facets included smearing goose grease on the royal barge and hiring a leprous welsh man to follow him round town purring.
Other scholars have preferred Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, who Shakespeare had dedicated his ‘Venus & Adonis’, his ‘Rape of Lucrece’, and his ‘Big Bumper Book of Bonking’ to, as the most likely of candidates with the HW simply being reversed in a cunning rouse supposedly suggested by Marlowe. The main problem with this theory has always been that he didn’t adopt this weird reversing initials lark in his other dedications to Wriothesley. On a related note, a mark of the aristocracy at the time was embellishing your name with far more letters than were actually required to indicate its pronunciation. ‘Wriothesley’ was actually pronounced ‘rotly’ – the family ancestors having been in the garbage disposal and composting business – they acquired their title by fertilising the lawns of Henry VII and only charging for the window boxes.
The predominant modern theory on the identity of ‘Mr WH’, is that it is William Hartnell, the actor who played the first Doctor Who. Hartnell was famously a pioneer of ‘method-acting’ and spent the Summer of 1963 researching time-travelling theories before seemingly cracking it himself on August 14th when he disappeared for several hours having gone to his outside toilet, and reappeared with three week’s worth of facial hair growth and a handwritten note from Ben Jonson warning him to stop peeing is his rose bushes.
“Thou art more lovely and more temperate:” – Back to the comparison fad in the next line with the abstract concept of loveliness being tackled first followed by the implication that the recipient of the poem is more susceptible to sea breezes and prevailing winds when it comes to their body temperature than most people. ‘Who art more lovely?’ was a popular parlour game amongst Elizabethan gentry – a less bawdy pre-cursor to ‘Who would you rather shag?’ so popular amongst the rank and file of the armed forces and the clergy nowadays. There is an account from the Royal Court itself at the time of the Queen engaging in a rather rambunctious game of ‘Who art more lovely?’ that led to the summoned execution of two of her former favourite Lords and one unfortunately buxom parlour maid.
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” – It is well known that Catherine Zeta-Jones suffered from appalling gastric troubles during the filming of ‘The Darling Buds of May’, to such an extent that Pam Ferris refused to do scenes with her unless Zeta-Jones had been pre-corked. Such precognition and seemingly anachronistic references is one of the strongest arguments for the William Hartnell theory.
“And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;” – The problem of diminutive fruit was a veritable scourge in Elizabethan society. “And wherefore canst thou find a seasoned tomato whose girth doth exceed that of a mouse’s scrotum? Marry, nowhere and no place both concurrently” (Act 3 Scene ii – ‘The Vexéd Grocer’ – Ben Jonson). There grew up at that time a burgeoning new profession of ‘fruit-stretcher’ who, for half a groat, would elongate any undersized fruit in your possession. Eventually, Lord Burghley had the practice outlawed for “it dost make the maidens blush and unsettled the learnéd cleric in his cloister to hear of man promising to make your plums swell.” Rumour had it that Burghley had brought this law into practice simply because of bitterness about a failed attempt to engorge a fine pear in his possession.
“Sometime too hot the eye of Heaven shines,” – For most of the four hundred years since this sonnet was written, scholars have believed that this was simply a metaphor explaining how sometime the Sun is quite warm. A recent find has cast some doubt upon this prevailing interpretation. Whilst clearing out a back cupboard at the ‘Pheasant and Quince’, a six hundred year-old pub on the banks of the River Thames, the new landlord, a Mr Phil Coxswain, discovered files of assorted documents dating from across the pub’s entire lifetime. Amongst them were posters from the late 1590s advertising entertainment at the venue including the following words about a big cockfight: ‘Deadly Desdemona v The Eye of Heaven – A Barbéd Beaked Battle to the Death’. So it seems, rather than a reference to the heat-wave of 1595 in which Lord Hownsley melted, it was Shakespeare giving his muse an insider betting tip on a cockfight, warning that one of the competitors tends to go to hard in the early rounds. The subsequent line in the sonnet, “And often is his gold complexion dimm’d” seems therefore to refer to the rooster’s propensity to tire quickly in fights. The poster also, disappointingly, puts a new perspective on the origins of ‘Othello’.
“By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d,” – Typical of the Bard was this self-deprecating line about his own receding hairline. He often ruminated on the subject of his own baldness, as did many of his contemporaries. Pre-genetics, the understanding of what led some men to become follically-challenged early into adulthood and others to be hirsute well into their dotage was very much the subject of great philosophical debate. The contrast of course a focus here because of Shakespeare falling into the first camp and the recipient of the sonnet William Hartnell being blessed with a mane of ice-white hair until his dying day. The two main theories in Elizabethan times on the receding of men’s hair are summed up rather neatly in this line of Shakespeare’s. The first camp, those of the ‘tonsorem deum’ (the barber of the gods) movement felt that Fate (here referenced as ‘by chance’) itself governed the lustrous or barren state of one’s pate and that predestination held every skull thatching in its icy claw. The second camp felt that the environment around a man was what influenced the blooming or fading of a man’s head forest (here referenced as ‘nature’s changing course’). It is generally believed that Shakespeare favoured this second theory and compared his own balding crown to the forming of an oxbow lake.
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” – The first of two references to eternal things. Interestingly, the two are completely distinct. ‘Eternal Summer’ was an Eau de Cologne that Hartnell predominantly wore during his time as the First Doctor. He took a bottle back to Elizabethan times as a present for Shakespeare due to the bard’s fascination with the scent the first time he met Hartnell. ‘He was amazed,’ Hartnell wrote in his journal, ‘that there was something in London that didn’t smell of faeces or decay. It seemed a blessed relief to him.’
“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st” – Shakespeare was a surprisingly tight man. The bar-fight that Marlowe died in started over Shakespeare’s refusal to pay the tab as he hadn’t received a packet of pork scratchings that was listed on the bill. In his first draft of ‘The Merchant of Venice’, Shylock got his pound of flesh, but this played so poorly with test audiences that Shakespeare had to rewrite it or fear having his first flop since his misguided “Antigone the Musical”. Even in the midst of a poem dedicated to the beauty of a lover and the richness of Summer, Shakespeare couldn’t resist reminding Hartnell that he owed him threepence for a carriage ride they’d shared to Highgate. As Hartnell wrote somewhat cryptically in his journal “17th August 1963/1694 – Had a splendid day with Bill trolling around ol’ London, only slightly marred by him frequently ‘coughing’ and muttering ‘threepence’”.
“Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,” – This is a reference to Roger D’Eath who developed the parasol for the Elizabethan market. Already a huge hit in continental Europe, D’Eath was quick to take up the manufacturing, production and marketing rights for England, earning him a small fortune. D’Eath was widely regarded as an unpleasant man, somewhat gauche with his money, having bought all the swans in Ipswich from Her Majesty and painting them blue. Hence the saying still in Suffolk for when someone dies: “I’ll warrant that Death has painted him as blue as a swan.” D’Eath, a patron of the arts, heard swiftly about the new mysterious figure hanging about with London’s theatre scene’s hottest ticket. Keen to muscle in on any potential action, D’Eath bombarded Hartnell with invites to model his new automated parasol in front of landed gentry at Hampton Court. Keen not to slight his friend, Shakespeare, Hartnell declined the invitation and Shakespeare’s gratitude is shown in this line. Interestingly enough, the incident inspired a now lost serial in the second season of Doctor Who called ‘A Proposition from the Reaper’ in which the Doctor battles Death in seeing who can make the most Mai Tais for alien dignitaries at a diplomatic soiree.
“When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:” – Interestingly enough, the original line, according to his friend and fellow member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Richard Burbage, was actually “When infernal lines in time thou know’st”. This was a reference to the increasing difficulties Hartnell had in remembering his lines for Doctor Who, a problem that he clearly had vocalised in his journeys back in time. Shakespeare’s original line seems to be supportive of his time-travelling friend’s woes. Quite why Shakespeare should then change it isn’t entirely clear, though Burbage does scribble somewhere in his diaries that the playwright was fascinated by Hartnell’s wrinkles or ‘lines to time’ as he so poetically put it. The actor being in his mid-fifties and already outliving 98% of all Elizabethans, Shakespeare would have seen very few visages that were as crenelated as Hartnell’s.
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,” – Here Shakespeare demonstrates his burgeoning knowledge of human biology. The second half of this line was lifted and adapted by Shakespeare from a translation of Andreas Vesalius’ ‘De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septum’ (1543). In the original source material the sentence reads ‘men can breathe because of bellows situated in the bowels, and my eyes can see this in action as I cut open Gunther whilst he was asleep’. Vesalius was arrested before he could make it ‘libri octum’ but this didn’t stop his work becoming the predominant voice in the world of Renaissance anatomy. “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” – Hartnell accidentally left his sonic screwdriver in 1597 and Shakespeare entirely failed to understand what it was or what it did.
Treatises of Gloria 