Shakespeare was born in Statford-upon-Avon on or about April 23, 1564. The object of the speaker’s affection will not blossom and shine for a mere 24 hours, but forever-or at least as long as this sonnet continues to be read. This speaker, however, answers in the negative and in his explanation of why his beloved young friend should not be compared to a summer’s day, manages to compliment not only the sonnet’s recipient, but every reader, as well as himself as sonnetteer.

A lesser poet might have been content supplying the expected affirmative response to the opening question. The first seventeen sonnets, for example, seem to be addressed to a young man, urging him to marry and have children “Sonnet 18” marks a change in theme from that of immortality by means of procreation, to immortality through verse.

Many Shakespearean critics, however, have recognized patterns or groups within the sequence. When Thomas Thorpe published Shakespeare’s sequence of 154 sonnets in 1609, he did not organize the poems into divisions.