So Long Lives This: Sonnet 18 and the Glory of the Patron

If you were to type “greatest love poems of all time” into any search engine, you would find that in every decent list, there are several poems that crop up again and again: Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty,” Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose,” and sometimes even W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One.” But just now, when I conducted my own internet search for the greatest love poems, I discovered that the most common poem by far—across every list I found—is William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, better known by its first line: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

But while I adore Sonnet 18 (as is right and proper), I do have some concerns with its universal classification as a love poem. At first glance, I admit that the text does appear romantic in nature. The Bard declares after the first line that his subject is “more lovely and more temperate” than a summer’s day. He calls his subject “fair,” later referencing the subject’s “eternal summer” which “shall not fade.” He insists that his subject’s fairness is immortal—that it will not die along with the beauty of a summer’s day. Shakespeare leaves the reader to wonder how this could possibly be true until the poem’s final couplet, where the Bard clues us in: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / so long lives this; and this gives life to thee.” In other words, this poem’s dramatic depiction of the subject’s beauty will last forever—or at least as long as men are alive to read it—and so his subject will never “lose possession” of the beauty preserved forever in these lines.

But on a second or third read, the astute reader may begin to notice some problems with this interpretation. While the poem makes grandiose references to the subject’s loveliness, temperateness, and “eternal summer,” the poem does not actually offer the reader any real, physical picture of what the subject looks like. Indeed, many readers likely imagine someone—either real or fictional—in place of the poem’s actual subject. There is nothing inherently wrong with this effect. Truthfully, there is something endearing about the fact that many men read this sonnet and imagine their wives. But it does cast some doubt on the poet’s final bold claim: that this poem is granting eternal life to its subject. Who is this subject? What is she actually like? What does it mean that she is lovely and temperate? What is the color of her hair, the shape of her nose, even the expression on her face? Because Shakespeare does not tell us, we are left to imagine—and because we are left to imagine, we discover that the poem has not given us any real idea of the person it is supposed to be immortalizing. The poem has lasted, but the person has disappeared.

What are we to make of this problem? At first, it may seem as though Shakespeare simply failed at his stated goal of capturing his subject’s “eternal summer” in a poem. However, in the historical context of the poetic tradition, a much different interpretation comes to light. When we interpret Sonnet 18 in the light of its classical predecessors, we begin to discover that the poem may not be about romantic love at all. Rather, the poem invites the reader to consider the nature of legacy, mortality, and the glory of the artistic patron.

The Patron and His Poet

In Elizabethan England, a playwright received a basic fee for his work—but if he wanted to be truly successful, he needed to secure the patronage of a wealthy aristocrat willing to fund his work. Patrons would supply funds to their clients, much like a business sponsoring a sports team or a university paying graduate students a stipend for their research. Shakespeare himself, the lowly son of a glove-maker, garnered many patrons among the nobility of Elizabethan England.

While this system of patronage does not survive in exactly the same form in the modern world, it was certainly not a new invention in Shakespeare’s day. The ancient Romans poets operated under a similar system, where wealthy aristocratic patrons would fund the work of poor poets. In exchange, it was traditional in the classical world for poets to write poems praising their patrons in flamboyant, exuberant terms. These poems were a method of both paying homage and expressing gratitude. But to the modern ear, the language used by a poet writing to his patron may sound intimate and even romantic. In general, this type of language takes two major forms.

First, the classical poet sometimes expresses a unique, intimate relationship to his patron through the language of ownership or possession. As an example, consider the poetry of Ovid, one of Horace’s contemporaries, writing to his patron, the consul Sextus Pompey:

As Venus remains the labour and glory of Apelles,
wringing her hair wet with the sea’s spray:
as warlike Athene stands guard on the Acropolis,
created in bronze and ivory by Phidias’s hand:
as Calamis wins praise for the horses he fashioned:
as those cattle, true to life, are a masterpiece by Myron:
so I’m not the least of your possessions, Sextus,
and celebrated as a work, a gift of your patronage.

Ovid frames the patron as the real artist: Apelles creating Venus; Phidias carving Athena; Calamis sculpting lifelike statues of animals. The patron makes the poet’s work possible, which means that the poet is merely the work of the patron’s hands. To the modern reader, the language of ownership and possession may sound romantic—but in actuality, it expresses a very different type of relationship. The patron gives the poet the means to create. Without the patron, the poet’s works never come into being. In other words, when Ovid tells Sextus Pompey that he is “not the least of [his] possessions,” it is not mere hyperbole. In the classical world, the patron really can claim ownership over the poems—and, in some sense, the poet.

Second, the classical poets tend to portray their patrons as partners with the poet in a search for immortality by means of legacy. Just like the poets and philosophers of the modern age, the ancient world sought a method of dealing with the problem of mortality. If everyone dies, what makes life meaningful? Is there any effective method available to man of achieving a legacy akin to immortality? As far back as the time of Homer, the ancient poets considered “song”—poetry, art, and storytelling—to be one such method, a genuine path to attaining immortality. Indeed, for the Greeks, an eternal memory in the form of poetry was not fundamentally different from a literal eternal life, like the lives of the deathless gods. This belief is exemplified in the character of Achilles, who chooses a glorious death over a long life—which, paradoxically, also secures for him the gift of immortality in the form of the Iliad, a song which will be sung forever.

This line of thought continues into the ancient Roman world. The classical Roman poets write with this mindset as a backdrop: that writing excellent poetry is a way of carving one’s name into the annals of history. As long as people read your poetry, you will be remembered—and in this way, you will live forever. It is for this reason, perhaps, that the Roman poet Martial can sensibly refer to himself as “Martial, known over the whole world.”

But when we understand poetry as linked to legacy and immortality, we also begin to see the relationship between the patron and the poet in a new light. The patron’s legacy, and thus his immortality, is tied up with the work of the poet; he will be remembered, if at all, as the person who made it possible for the poet to bring his own work into being. In other words, the patron’s immortality depends on the work of his client. For example, Horace writes to his patron Maecenas in Ode II.17:

Why rend my heart with that sad sigh?
It cannot please the gods or me
That you, Maecenas, first should die,
My pillar of prosperity.
Ah! should I lose one half my soul
Untimely, can the other stay
Behind it? Life that is not whole,
Is that as sweet? The self-same day
Shall crush us twain; no idle oath
Has Horace sworn; whene’er you go,
We both will travel, travel both
The last dark journey down below.

If Ovid’s language of ownership and possession does not sound romantic to the average modern reader, these verses by Horace certainly do. Horace says that if Maecenas were to die, it would be akin to losing “one half [his] soul.” He wonders whether his soul, left behind after Maecenas’s death, could even survive the loss. In the wake of this lament, he assures Maecenas that their souls are linked—that they will die together and “travel both / the last dark journey down below.” But while these dramatic lines may sound like a lover’s promises to his beloved, they are actually yet another traditional expression of the profound relationship between the patron and his poet. If the patron dies, all of the poet’s future poetry also dies. Because the patron does not write poetry of his own, and because he possesses some degree of ownership over the poet’s poetry, his own legacy and immortality are bound up in the poet’s works. The relationship is mutual. The poet and patron serve as one another’s paths to immortality. In this sense, their fates are forever intertwined.

This Gives Life to Thee

But what does any of this have to do with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18? To begin with, it is almost certain that Shakespeare did not write Sonnet 18 to a woman (such as his wife), but to a man, a mysterious figure generally referred to in scholarly circles as the “Fair Youth.” Many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, especially his early sonnets, are written to a beautiful young man whom Shakespeare encourages to marry and have children so that he can pass his beauty on through his children. While it is unclear who exactly the “Fair Youth” is, many scholars now believe that it was Henry Wriothesley, the third earl of Southampton.

For some scholars, the fact that Sonnet 18 was probably written to a man calls Shakespeare’s sexuality into question. The logic here is relatively sound: If one reads Sonnet 18 as a love poem (as most do), and if it was also written for an attractive young man, then Shakespeare must have been homosexual—or at least not strictly heterosexual. However, there is a flaw in one of these premises. One need not—and perhaps ought not—read Sonnet 18 as a love poem for one simple reason: Henry Wriothesley was one of William Shakespeare’s patrons.

Let us return to Sonnet 18—but this time, let us read it as a poem in the tradition of classical poets addressing their patrons. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Shakespeare asks, before answering his own question—Wriothesley is “more lovely and more temperate.” Why? Not because a summer’s day is less beautiful, but because it is transient and changeable. Shakespeare points out that sometimes the sun shines too hot; sometimes clouds pass over the sun. Not only is the summer’s day changeable, but it also fades over time as the seasons change; “every fair from fair sometime declines.” But while beauty naturally dwindles over time, Shakespeare makes the bold claim at the beginning of the third quatrain that unlike the transient summer’s day, Wriothesley’s “eternal summer shall not fade / nor lose possession of that fair [he] ow’st.” In other words, Wriothesley possesses something—a fairness, a beauty—that will not, perhaps even cannot die because it has been preserved within this poem.

But as previously discussed, if Shakespeare really does mean to say that Wriothesley’s physical beauty will not fade with time, then he only serves to highlight his own failure as a poet. He has not succeeded in capturing any details of Wriothesley’s appearance at all. That is why the reader must look to the language of possession to reorient himself toward Shakespeare’s true meaning. Wriothesley, Shakespeare’s patron, possesses something beautiful that will never die, but it is not his physical beauty. Instead, he possesses the same thing that all patrons possess: both a poet and a poem that he did not write, but brought into the world. He owns this poem as surely as Shakespeare does. Its beauty is his beauty. Its legacy is his legacy.

In the second half of the third quatrain, Shakespeare develops his theme by reassuring Wriothesley, “Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade.” One might compare this language to the aforementioned poem by Horace, who assures his patron Maecenas that his mortality is bound up with Horace’s own mortality. Shakespeare tells his patron that he will not wander in the shade of death, but only because of the sonnet’s final couplet: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” Wriothesley will live forever, but not because his beauty has been captured in this poem. He will live forever because he is William Shakespeare’s patron. Without him, the world might have never read Sonnet 18. Without him, several of the greatest plays ever written might never have seen the stage. The poem is Shakespeare’s glory, but it is also the glory of the man who made it possible.

And in an age of influencers, celebrities, and public personalities, perhaps we would do well to reflect on the humble glory of the patron. Behind every artist stands someone—probably many people—who helped to bring that artist’s work into the world: an encouraging friend, an enlightening teacher, even a motivating rival. While the artist deserves credit for his art, we must not forget that beauty is only produced within community. Art is most meaningful when it is both the product and the most intimate expression of human relationship. When we weep during the final act of a Shakespeare play, we ought to remember not only the man who wrote the play, but the nearly-forgotten patrons without whom the play never would have seen the light of day. Almost exactly four hundred years after his death, Henry Wriothesley’s “eternal summer” has not faded after all; whether we know it or not, we bask in its glory every time we open the works of Shakespeare and read those immortal lines once again.

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