Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
I could like Shakespeare pen idyllic lines!
Or is that but a quaint and drawn cliche?
Cliche, archaic, sexist too I find.
When but this hardship ever passes by,
And you and I like lovers ever be,
Will be the day that I release a sigh,
This task complete a payment, it’s a fee.
A fee like dowry, no, again that is,
Just slightly gross to treat you like a toy,
That one might buy inside a Target, Iz,
You mean such more than idle trinket joy.
So here I end my heart wrought task I’m done,
No more shall I be needing write, you’ve won.
I think this is pretty good as a concept. I love modernist takes on classic poetry, but, that said, there could be some improvement here.
Part of what is appealing about “adjusting” classic poetry is shoehorning in a new meaning between the lines of the old. I notice some … let’s call them “distractions” … away from the iambic pentameter of the classic work. I fully realize that it may be on purpose, but given the work you’re referencing, it does more of a disservice than a service. It starts with your second stanza and, while it isn’t every line, really makes itself known from there forwards.
While overall enjoyable, I think focusing more on fitting the form of what you’re satirizing would make the whole thing more effective as a whole.
Yeah I find it also shows a lack of study of the original material. In academia it’s largely believed that the original sonnet was actually written to a man and is about Shakespeare’s conflicted romantic feelings towards him.
Actually that would be considered outside the original material. You could never actually glean that from the material itself.
As for actual study of Sonnet 18, this isn’t based on Sonnet 18 though it co-opts the opening line thereof. It’s a satire of English sonnets in general and their propensity for flowery language describing romanticism in general. It only uses Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18’s opening line and mentions the bard specifically because he is the largest offender of, and popularised, the cliché.
Edit: though, it is true that I don’t particularly like Shakespeare’s works.
