William Shakespeare sonnet 18 analysis

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William Shakespeare sonnet 18 analysis

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Summary
The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the summer’s day: he is “more lovely and more temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by “rough winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,” or too dim. And summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair sometime declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade...”) and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved’s beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.”
Commentary
This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeare’s works, only lines such as “To be or not to be” and “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” are better-known. This is not to say that it is at all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place.
On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the “eye of heaven” with its “gold complexion”; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the “darling buds of May” giving way to the “eternal summer”, which the speaker promises the beloved. The language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained clause—almost every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause.
Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young man to have children. The “procreation” sequence of the first 17 sonnets ended with the speaker’s realization that the young man might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, “in my rhyme.” Sonnet 18, then, is the first “rhyme”—the speaker’s first attempt to preserve the young man’s beauty for all time. An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker’s poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloved’s “eternal summer” shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,” the speaker writes in the couplet, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

William Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”, is perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet of his whole complete works of one hundred and fifty-four. Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” is an intriguing sonnet that, though still comparing the beloved subject of the sonnet to a “Summer’s Day”, still finds its greatest virtue in the final two lines of the sonnet; the gift of immortality through Shakespeare’s written word. By concluding “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” with the fateful couplet that he so chose, it may be argued that, though, yes, Shakespeare was comparing his subject to a “Summer’s Day”, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” is a proverbial work on literary immortality.
SONNET XVIII
“SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY?”
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
     So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
                                  (William Shakespeare, 1609)
     The renowned Shakespearean line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (1), is a line that few men in their youth have not memorized for recitation or young women can remember reading in a letter from a ardent suitor. It evokes images of 17th century lovers quoting poetry to one another in much the same way that Romeo serenaded Juliet from beneath her balcony. In many ways Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is the single line that could sum several centuries of amorist literature, and is the archetypal apex of love poetry.
     William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” opens with a four line stanza, or quatrain, with the first two lines, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate:” (1-2), introducing the general premise of the sonnet; that his subject is, in many ways, far better than a summer’s day. Shakespeare’s subject is, as he describes, “more lovely and more temperate” (2); his subject being more beautiful and significantly more balanced or emotionally stable than the harsh extremes of a temperamental English summer.
     William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” then proceeds, for the following six lines, to bring to light the many failings and short fallings that a summer’s day can have. Shakespeare describes in the third line, “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” (3), how early summer’s weather can be considered a bit tempestuous; it’s winds ruining any excursions with its stormy torrents. Shakespeare’s fourth line, “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:” (4), describes how though summer may be beautiful it still is only temporary and, like many beautiful things, must draw to a close and make way for their notorious winters of aging and eventual death. Shakespeare’s fifth and sixth lines describe how, during a particularly hot summer, the sun, “the eye of heaven” (5), shines far too intensely and in cloudy weather the days are overcast and gray; “his gold complexion dimmed;” (6).

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What is the theme of "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

is the theme about "youth and age" or "Shakespeare's love lives forever in the poem"?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY - Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet is, perhaps, one of the best-known sonnets contained in the English literary canon. It is a conventional Shakespearean sonnet that explores conventional themes in an original way. With characteristic skill Shakespeare uses the sonnet to exalt poetry and his beloved.

The first quatrain introduces the primary conceit of the sonnet, the comparison of the speaker’s beloved to a summer’s day. In the first line the speaker introduces the comparison of his beloved to a summer’s day. The speaker then builds on this comparison when he writes, “Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (2) because he is describing his beloved in a way that could also describe summer. When he describes “rough winds [that] do shake the darling buds of May,” (3) he is using rough winds as a metaphor for capricious chance and change, and he implies that his beloved does not suffer from these winds as summer does. The first quatrain, therefore, introduces a comparison that is expanded upon by the remaining two quatrains.

The second quatrain strengthens the comparison of the beloved to a summer’s day. The speaker anthropomorphizes the sky, or “heaven,” (5) by using the metaphor of an “eye” (5) for the sun so that the comparison between a person and a season becomes vivid. By assigning heaven an “eye,” the speaker invokes the image of his beloved’s eyes. Similarly, in the next line when the speaker mentions that summer’s “gold complexion” is often “dimmed,” (6) he is attempting to compare another human attribute of his beloved with some trait of summer. The second quatrain presents summer as possessing only mutable beauty.

The third quatrain no longer focuses on the mutability of summer, but it speaks of the nearly eternal nature of the memory of the beloved. When the speaker assures his beloved that her “eternal summer shall not fade,” (9) he is using summer as a metaphor for her beauty. Using the word “fade” facilitates the comparison of the abstract notion of a summer’s day to the concrete person of the beloved because fading is a quality of light. Similarly, when the speaker writes of the beloved entering the “shade” (10) of death, he is expanding on the use of the metaphor and reinforcing the poem’s primary conceit. When the speaker boasts that his beloved will not suffer the same fate as a summer’s day because he has committed her to “eternal lines,” (12) he adds the theme of poetry itself to a sonnet that had previously been a love poem. Shakespeare gives his beloved immortality through poetry that God did not give to a summer’s day.

The couplet concludes the sonnet by tying together the themes of love and poetry. In it the speaker starkly contrasts the life spans of his poem and his beloved’s memory to the fleeting nature of a summer’s day. He boasts that, unlike a summer’s day, his poetry and the memory of his beloved will last “so long as men can breathe or eyes can see” (13). This last comparison provides a stark contrast to the time period, “a summer’s day,” (1) introduced at the beginning and exalts poetry along with the beloved.

Shakespeare used a conventional form of poetry to praise poetry and his beloved. He boasted that both would be preserved nearly eternally. Five hundred years later, no one refutes his boast.

**************************************…
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18, often alternately titled Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?, is one of the best-known of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets 1-126 in the accepted numbering stemming from the first edition in 1609), it is the first of the cycle after the opening sequence now described as the Procreation sonnets. Most scholars now agree that the original subject of the poem, the beloved to whom the poet is writing, is a male, though the poem is commonly used to describe a woman.
In the sonnet, the speaker compares his beloved to the summer season, and argues that his beloved is better. He also states that his beloved will live on forever through the words of the poem. Scholars have found parallels within the poem to Ovid's Tristia and Amores, both of which have love themes. Sonnet 18 is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in a rhymed couplet. Detailed exegeses have revealed several double meanings within the poem, giving it a greater depth of interpretation.
A facsimile of the original printing of Sonnet 18.
The poem starts with a flattering question to the beloved—"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The beloved is both "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day. The speaker lists some negative things about summer: it is short—"summer's lease hath all too short a date"—and sometimes the sun is too hot—"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved has beauty that will last forever, unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's day. By putting his love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever. "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The lover's beauty will live on, through the poem which will last as long as it can be read.

Context

The poem is part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets 1-126 in the accepted numbering stemming from the first edition in 1609). It is also the first of the cycle after the opening sequence now described as the Procreation sonnets, although some scholars see it as a part of the Procreation sonnets, as it still addresses the idea of reaching eternal life through the written word, a theme of sonnets 15-17. In this view, it can be seen as part of a transition to sonnet 20's time theme.[1] There are many theories about the identity of the 1609 Quarto's enigmatic dedicatee, Mr. W.H. Some scholars suggest that this poem may be expressing a hope that the Procreation sonnets despaired of: the hope of metaphorical procreation in a homosexual relationship.[2] Other scholars have pointed out that the order in which the sonnets are placed may have been the decision of publishers and not of Shakespeare. This introduces the possibility that Sonnet 18 was originally intended for a woman.[3]

Structure

Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet. It consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet, and has the characteristic rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. The poem carries the meaning of an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets typically discussed the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but not always.[4] It also contains a volta, or shift in the poem's subject matter, beginning with the third quatrain.[5]

Iambic Pentameter of a line of Sonnet 18[6]
Stress	x	/	x	/	x	/	x	/	x	/
Syllable	Thou	art	more	love-	ly	and	more	temp-	pe-	rate

Exegesis

"Complexion" in line six, can have two meanings: 1) The outward appearance of the face as compared with the sun ("the eye of heaven") in the previous line, or 2) the older sense of the word in relation to The four humours. In the time of Shakespeare, "complexion" carried both outward and inward meanings, as did the word "temperate" (externally, a weather condition; internally, a balance of humours). The second meaning of "complexion" would communicate

that the beloved's inner, cheerful, and temperate disposition is sometimes blotted out like the sun on a cloudy day. The first meaning is more obvious, meaning of a negative change in his outward appearance.[7]
The word, "untrimmed" in line eight, can be taken two ways: First, in the sense of loss of decoration and frills, and second, in the sense of untrimmed sails on a ship. In the first interpretation, the poem reads that beautiful things naturally lose their fanciness over time. In the second, it reads that nature is a ship with sails not adjusted to wind changes in order to correct course. This, in combination with the words "nature's changing course", creates an oxymoron: the unchanging change of nature, or the fact that the only thing that does not change is change. This line in the poem creates a shift from the mutability of the first eight lines, into the eternity of the last six. Both change and eternity are then acknowledged and challenged by the final line.[4]
"Ow'st" in line ten can also carry two meanings equally common at the time: "ownest" and "owest". Many readers interpret it as "ownest", as do many Shakespearean glosses ("owe" in Shakespeare's day, was sometimes used as a synonym for "own"). However, "owest" delivers an interesting view on the text. It conveys the idea that beauty is something borrowed from nature—that it must be paid back as time progresses. In this interpretation, "fair" can be a pun on "fare", or the fare required by nature for life's journey.[8] Other scholars have pointed out that this borrowing and lending theme within the poem is true of both nature and humanity. Summer, for example, is said to have a "lease" with "all too short a date." This monetary theme is common in many of Shakespeare's sonnets, as it was an everyday theme in his budding capitalistic society.[9]

Notes

^ Shakespeare, William et al. The Sonnets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pg. 130 ISBN 0521294037
^ Neely, Carol Thomas (October 1978). "The Structure of English Renaissance Sonnet Sequence". ELH (ELH, Vol. 45, No. 3) 45 (3): 359–389. doi:10.2307/2872643. JSTOR 2872643.
^ Schiffer, James. Shakespeare's Sonnets. New York: Garland Pub, 1999. pg. 124. ISBN 0815323654
^ a b Jungman, Robert E. (January 2003). "Trimming Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.". ANQ a Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews (ANQ) 16 (1): 18–19. doi:10.1080/08957690309598181. ISSN 0895-769X.
^ Preminger, Alex and T. Brogan. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. pg. 894 ISBN 0691021236
^ Simpson, Paul. Stylistics. New York: Routledge, 2004. pg. 27. ISBN 0415281059
^ Ray, Robert H. (October 1994). "Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.". The Explicator 53 (1): 10–11. doi:10.1080/00144940.1994.9938800. ISSN 0014-4940.
^ Howell, Mark (April 1982). "Shakespeare's Sonnet 18". The Explicator 40 (3): 12. ISSN 0014-4940.
^ Thurman, Christopher (May 2007). "Love's Usury, Poet's Debt: Borrowing and Mimesis in Shakespeare's Sonnets". Literature Compass (Literature Compass) 4 (3): 809–819. doi:10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00433.x.

[edit] References

Alden, Raymond (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare, with Variorum Reading and Commentary. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston.
Baldwin, T. W. (1950). On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
Booth, Stephen (1977). Shakespeare's Sonnets. Yale University Press, New Haven.
Dowden, Edward (1881). Shakespeare's Sonnets. London.
Hubler, Edwin (1952). The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Poetry. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Tyler, Thomas (1989). Shakespeare’s Sonnets. London D. Nutt.
Vendler, Helen (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Paraphrase and analysis (Shakespeare-online)
Sparknotes' reading of the sonnet
Commentary on the poem
Modern English read through of sonnet 18

While Shakespeare was pursuing a successful career in acting, writing plays, promoting other playwrights and managing theatres he was also writing sonnets. He wrote most of them as a young man. Among Elizabethans, sonnets were regarded as personal poems not intended for publication. They were usually circulated among the poet’s friends and it was actually considered out of order to write them for publication. Shakespeare’s sonnets were published in 1609, however - almost certainly without his knowledge – by a disreputable publisher who was notorious for stealing manuscripts. When he was forty-five, seven years before his death, a slim volume entitled ‘Shake-Speares Sonnets’ appeared in London’s two main bookshops. Although we now look back on the plays with a feeling that he said everything in them that a man might ever want to say about the world, they were not personal but written exclusively for public entertainment.
The first hundred and twenty six sonnets in Shakespeare’s volume appear to be addressed to a beautiful young man. Although there is an erotic underlying theme running through them that doesn’t seem to be their main subject. They express a widerange of topics from poetry, painting and music, to nobility, the breeding of children, sexual betrayal, and the ravages of Time.
The next batch, 127 to 152, moves away from the young man to a shady, mysterious, dark woman who is fascinating but treacherous. The poet’s passions become more personal and intense compared with the friendship displayed in the first batch – his adulterous obsession with her; his feelings of inadequacy; and the disgust and revulsion he feels when she proves false. Reading them through in sequence offers an awesome emotional experience. (Read a more in-depth analysis of William Shakespeare’s love sonnets.)
The last two sonnets seem inconsequential. They are imitations of Greek epigrams devoted to Cupid, a young votress of the goddess Diana, and a hot therapeutic spring. At first glance they seem separate from the dark lady sonnets but they form a poetic summing up of the poet’s relationship with her and the reflections on love that are dealt with in detail in the other sonnets.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: ‘SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY?’
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'SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY?'

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Form

The basic structure of most Shakespearean sonnets can be represented in this way:
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

There are fourteen rhymed lines in the poem, each consisting of ten syllables. This is the basic form of the sonnet. The poem has a variety of rhymes - seven pairs altogether.

Identifying a turn may at first sight have seemed tricky: Shakespeare's sonnet is printed as an unbroken fourteen-line poem rather than as two sections of eight lines and six lines. Even so, we can still observe an octave and a sestet in the poem, with a definite turn between them, introduced by the word 'But'.

Most English sonnets are divided into lines of roughly ten syllables with five stresses - a measure or metre known as pentameter. You have seen that Sonnet 18 follows this metre strictly, and the arrangement of its stresses or marks of emphasis can be represented as follows, with accents to indicate the stressed syllables:
'Shall I compa´re thee to´ asu´mmer's da´y?

A line of poetry that repeatedly uses an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is called an iambic line. Sonnet 18, then, is written in iambic pentameter - lines of ten syllables with five alternating stresses. Iambic pentameter is the most common measure used in English poetry, but you might hear it almost everywhere in everyday English speech, since its rhythm slips easily into those of ordinary conversation.

Like rhythm, the rhyme scheme in Shakespeare's sonnets is extremely important: it often conditions the way in which we read the poems, and it can shape the meanings we derive from them. Sonnet 18, for instance, can be read not just as an octave and sestet (eight lines followed by six), but as three quatrains (three units of four lines) followed by a closing couplet of two rhymed lines. The rhymed couplet, which Thomas Wyatt brought to the English sonnet, is a very distinctive feature of Shakespeare's sonnets, so strongly marked that it might even be considered an additional turn: it appears to 'clinch' the argument or offer the reader/listener a summarizing statement that has the force and authority of a proverb or epigram (a condensed or pointed statement, usually witty or surprising).

Meaning

The opening of Sonnet 18 immediately makes a comparison between the poet's friend and the beauty of a summer's day. This technique of presenting one thing as being similar to another is known as simile. Line 5, however, makes use of metaphor, not just likening but substituting one thing for another, so that the sun becomes 'the eye of heaven'. The metaphor is extended into line 6, where the sun becomes a human face with a 'gold complexion'. The imagery of light is continued in line 8, which refers both to the decline of natural beauty when left uncultivated or 'untrimmed' and also to the guttering light of a candle left 'untrimmed'. It has also been suggested that the line contains a subtle linking of 'nature's changing course' and the 'untrimmed' sails of a boat ('trimming' in all of these instances implying an act of neatness and order). Finally, the words 'fade' and 'shade' also hint at conditions of light (or the loss of light). Imagery, then, can be seen as a way of giving shape and coherence to the form or structure of a poem.

The repetition of the word 'summer' develops the ideas and arguments of the poem. The speaker says that his friend will grow 'to time' (he will reach as far as time can go) in 'eternal lines'. Here, the speaker is using a pun or double-meaning, suggesting both 'lines' of descent, from one family to the next, and 'lines' of poetry. In contrast to the brevity of summer, his friend's beauty will be celebrated eternally in the lines of the poem.
The word fair is also repeated several time. Line seven of the poem asserts that 'every fair from fair sometime declines', perhaps suggesting that every fair thing (in the sense of every beautiful thing) eventually loses its fairness. The line seems to gain strength from its compression and also from the repeated 'f' sound. Then the word 'fair' reappears, again in a rather odd way, in line 10: 'Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st.' Here, 'ow'st' is an abbreviated form of 'ownest'. Summer is 'leased' for a short period of time, but the 'fair' friend of the poet will never lose possession of his beauty, because it will always be celebrated and remembered in the poem itself.

A simple device of repetition - repeating 'summer', 'eternal' and 'fair' - can help to shape or develop ideas and arguments. One of the familiar 'building blocks' of poetry is imagery, a set of words that evokes strong sense impressions (usually visual). So, for instance, 'a summer's day' is an image that evokes impressions of sunshine and warmth. The purpose of imagery is to make some vague or abstract idea, such as love, seem more concrete through likening it to something vivid and perceptible. Shakespeare's sonnets make extensive use of particular images; in fact, these images are a major structuring device.

A little Controversy Perhaps?

We might assume that the sonnet is addressed to a beautiful woman, but it is now generally accepted that both the speaker and the imagined listener are male. This sonnet is one of a sequence of 154 poems, first published together in 1609. The first 126 sonnets record and celebrate the poet's friendship with a young man, referred to in one sonnet as 'my lovely boy', while the later sonnets reveal the presence of a 'dark lady'. One of the most unusual features of Shakespeare's sonnet sequence is this intense concentration on a friendship between two men. The speaker addresses the young man in Sonnet 18 with passionate and extravagant words. The nature of the friendship between the two men is never explicitly stated, though it is possible that Shakespeare is addressing a patron and using praise and flattery to seal what is essentially an economic relationship. The suggestion of gay love in Shakespeare's sonnets has been alluded to by later writers, including Oscar Wilde, and there are certainly instances of a more explicit homo-eroticism in the writings of Shakespeare's contemporaries.

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