Sonnet 18 Copywork
All fourteen lines of "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
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About this printable
The most famous of the sonnets, complete in fourteen lines and perfectly sized for a copywork session. Students practice their handwriting while working through rhyme scheme, quatrains, and the closing couplet. A dependable introduction to the sonnet form. 10 pages, 1/4-inch letters in manuscript print on dashed manuscript lines. Sheets included: Copywork (Step 1), First Letter Hints (Step 2), Memory Lines (Step 3), Source Text, First Letters Only, Randomized Redacting. Shakespeare, Sonnet 18. Public domain text.
ON THIS SHEET: 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 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. — Shakespeare, Sonnet 18. LETTER SIZE: 1/4-inch. HANDWRITING: manuscript print. SHEETS: Copywork (Step 1), First Letter Hints (Step 2), Memory Lines (Step 3), Source Text, First Letters Only, Randomized Redacting.
- Category Shakespeare
- Price Free
- Format Printable PDF
- Usage Print unlimited copies
Inside the PDF
3 pages from the 10-page PDF, as they print.
A plan for this set
A longer text: give Steps 1, 2 and 3 about two weeks, one sheet a day.
- Days 1–4 Copywork (Step 1). Read the whole text, then copy it exactly.
- Days 5–8 First Letter Hints (Step 2). Write it again with only the first letter of each word as a prompt.
- Days 9–10 Memory Lines (Step 3). Write it from memory on lines sized to each word.
Paste any sonnet or speech and print the three sheets that get it recited: copy it, hint it, write it from memory. Free for 20 pages a month, no card.
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