ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and

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Trimming Shakespeare's Sonnet 18

Robert E. Jungman

To cite this article: Robert E. Jungman (2003) Trimming Shakespeare's Sonnet 18,
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 16:1, 18-19, DOI:
10.1080/08957690309598181

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Published online: 24 Mar 2010.

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 18 ANQ

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight. Ed. A. C. Cawley and J. J. Anderson. London: Everyman,
1976.
Weiss, Victoria L. “The Medieval Knighting Ceremony in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight.” Chaucer Review 12 (1978): 183-89.
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Trimming Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

In Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’, William Shake-
speare reminds his friend that although physical beauty inevitably disap-
pears (“And every fair from fair sometime declines”[7]), his friend will
exist in an “eternal summer” (9) by means of the poet’s “eternal lines” (12).
The structure of this poem appears, at first glance, to be a conventional
English sonnet, but the argument of the poem suggests instead the older
Petrarchan or Italian form with its octet and sestet (Ramsey 133). In par-
ticular, the first eight lines present a general statement of the mutability of
all things, followed in the last six lines by a reversal, an assertion that the
poet’s verse will transcend change and thus keep the friend alive “So long
as men can breathe or eyes can see” (13; Vendler 121-22).
The key moment of this reversal actually occurs in the last word of the
last two lines of the “octet,” lines 7 and 8:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
According to Stephen Booth, “untrimmed” is normally glossed as
“stripped of ornament” or something comparable (16 1). “Untrimmed,”
therefore, is usually taken to mean a lack of fancy clothes or ornament and
is thought to have “fair” in line 7 as its grammatical referent. The resulting
meaning is that “chance” or “nature’s [. . .] course” will strip every “fair”
thing of its beautiful clothes or ornament, that is, its exterior or physical
beauty. The “every fair” thing, in turn, may be understood to be the physi-
cal beauty of the young friend, the beauty of their friendship, or even the
beauty of any other friendship in which the friend might engage.
Although this standard interpretation of “untrimmed” is perfectly rea-
sonable, a different reading of the word is also possible. Specifically, for
the verb “trim” the OED lists as meaning no. 14 “to adjust (the sails or
yards) with reference to the direction of the wind and the course of the
ship, so as to obtain the greatest advantage,” and as meaning no. 13, “to
steady, as with cargo or ballast” (363). Both these meanings, the first doc-
umented from the early seventeenth century and the second from the late
 Winter 2003, Vol. 16, No. 1 19

sixteenth century, suggest that “trim” could be associated with nautical

matters during Shakespeare’s lifetime (Willen and Reed 20; Duncan-Jones
146).
“Untrimmed” in line 8 of Sonnet 18, therefore, might well mean “unad-
justed” and refer to “nature’s changing course.” The metaphor here is that
nature is a ship constantly changing its direction, an obvious symbol of
mutability, as is the statement that “nature” causes “every fair from fair [to]
sometime decline [. . . .]” But if “untrimmed” is taken to mean that nature’s
course is unadjusted, its sails “untrimmed,” then the poet is paradoxically
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saying through the trope of oxymoron’ that nature’s changing is what is

unchanged; mutability is eternal, or, conversely, eternity is constant change
in nature.
Consequently, the exchange of change (“nature’s changing course”) and
unchanged (“untrimmed”) in line 8 replicates in the microcosm of the trope
the larger structural reversal of Shakespeare’s argument in the macrocosm
of the sonnet as a whole: the mutability theme of the first eight lines gives
way to its opposite in the sestet, which powerfully affirms the eternity of
the poet’s art (“thy eternal summer shall not fade [. . .] When in eternal
lines to time thou grow’st”). Sonnet 18, then, both affirms and denies muta-
bility. Mutability is affirmed; nature’s course is changing; but because this
change is eternal-“untrimmed”-mutability is also denied, thus allowing
the poet to move easily from the eternity of mutability to the eternity of art.

ROBERT E. JUNGMAN
Louisiana Tech University
NOTES
I . For “oxymoron,” Puttenham uses the term “syneciosis” or the “Crosse
copling,” “because it takes me two contrary words, and tieth them as it were in a
paire of couples, and so makes them agree like good fellowes, as I saw once in
Fraunce a wolfe coupled with a mastiffe, and a foxe with a hounde” (206).

WORKS CITED
Booth, Stephen, ed. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd
Series. London: Nelson, 1997.
Puttenham, George. The Arte of English foesie. Ed. Gladys D. Willcock and Alice
Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1936.
Ramsey, Paul. The Fickle Glass: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New York:
AMS, 1979.
Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. A New VariorumEdition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets.
Vol. 1. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1944.
Vendler, Helen, ed. The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1997.
Willen, Gerald, and Victor B. Reed, eds. A Casebook on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
New York: Crowell, 1964.