Explication Of Sonnet 130

Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” and Pablo Neruda’s “My ugly love” are popularly known to describe beauty in a way hardly anyone would write: through the truth. It’s a common fact that modern lovers and poets speak or write of their beloved with what they and the audience would like to hear, with kind and breathtaking words and verses. Yet, Shakespeare and Neruda, honest men as they both were, chose to write about what love truly is, it matters most what’s on the inside rather than the outside. The theme of true beauty and love are found through Shakespeare and Neruda’s uses of imagery, structure, and tone.

In life people sometimes face different tribulations that bring them down such as being judged for their physical appearance or even the way they are. Writers in literature who are known to write about romantic things sometimes use this as a way to create things to write about. In sonnet 130, Shakespeare helps us understand that even though his wife has different flaws he still loves her for who she is as a person. Shakespeare uses a critical and judgmental tone to show that even though he compares his mistress to all of these things he still loves her even though her physical appearance isn’t the best.

Shakespeare examines love in two different ways in Sonnets 116 and 130. In the first, love is treated in its most ideal form as an uncompromising force (indeed, as the greatest force in the universe); in the latter sonnet, Shakespeare treats love from a more practical aspect: it is viewed simply and realistically without ornament. Yet both sonnets are justifiable in and of themselves, for neither misrepresents love or speaks of it slightingly. Indeed, Shakespeare illustrates two qualities of love in the two sonnets: its potential and its objectivity. This paper will compare and contrast the two sonnets by Shakespeare and show how they represent two different attitudes to love.

In the first quatrain of “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun…”, the speaker is already showing that this is not an ordinary love poem. He says, “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (line 1). This metaphor depicts that the woman does not have bright eyes. Most poets would use a cliché to describe a woman’s eyes as bright or like sapphires, but the speaker is saying there is nothing special about her eyes. Next, the speaker describes the woman’s lips. The color coral is slightly orange, but he believes coral is more red than her lips. Also, most poets would describe their subjects to have bright, shiny red lips (2). In these two lines, the speaker compares his mistress to things found in nature, and many people associate beauty with nature. However, that is not the case with this poem. He describes her as the complete opposite. In line 3, the woman’s skin is described as gray which makes it seem like her skin is dull. In Shakespeare's time, pale skin was more desirable, and since she does not have a pale complexion, it would make her less attractive. The speaker then compares her hair to wire in this line: “If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head” (4). A beautiful woman is usually described as having silky locks. That is the opposite in this poem. This comparison depicts the woman to have hair that lacks

Sonnets are known for having a rigid format and being the hoard of poets’ flowery love confessions and tormenting heartache. While most poets generally stick to that cliche topic of love and the traditional English or Petrarchan structures, sonnets are not defined by these common features. Both Shakespeare’s “My mistress’ eyes are…” and Collins’s “Sonnet” satirically poke at typical sonnets, however, Shakespeare follows the standard English sonnet style while parodying the classic subject of love to show how ridiculous and idealistic love sonnets can be. On the other hand, Collins breaks free from those stern sonnet rules to joke about the strictness of sonnet structures while defining typical sonnet rules.

So the lover, the poet, treats the loved object, the young man, as he would himself. The loved object serves as a substitute for some unattained ideal. In the case of the sonnets, the ideal is love. Being in love allows the poet to have what he wants but could not acquire before and serves as a means of satisfying his self-love.

One of William Shakespeare's tools from his choices of words was figurative diction since most words used to describe the narrator’s mistress were based in comparing her to other objects. For example, the poem starts with the narrator using the words “eyes”, “like”, “nothing”, and “sun”. The narrator introduces an example of a simile from the figurative choice of words since the word “like” is been used to compare her to something else. In this case he's comparing the sun’s brightness to the dull light of his mistress's eyes and the eyes are important because they are the door to the soul. Then in line 2 from Sonnet 130, the narrator says that the color of the coral outcast more “her lip’s red”. This is an example of a metaphor since the narrator

Love comes in many colors. The blood-crimson of lust and the jade-green of jealously are but two of the vast palate required to paint this inescapable human passion. William Shakespeare’s store of colors is unrivaled. No human failing, foible or foolishness escapes his gentle, comedic reproof. He equally enjoins his audience to venture as bravely as he does into the palpable horror of love gone amiss. In “OTHELLO,”“MACBETH,” and many more dramas, love’s fatal potential to provoke vengeance or the quest for earthly power is powerfully felt. These are epic investigations of love’s progression. A sonnet, however, is the equivalent of the modern short story. It is a snapshot of a single, significant experience. In two of Shakespeare’s sonnets – diverse in time and temperament, but complimentary in their conclusions – Shakespeare states his deepest feelings about the potential for a human love that is an un-judgmental commitment to the selfless nourishment of a partner. Sonnet 116, with a certainty and wisdom obtained from experience and suffering, marches out a rigorous and profound definition of true love. Sonnet 29 finds a soul in turmoil salvaged by an epiphany of understanding the power of true love to heal. By examining the perspective of the respective speakers, their individual progresses, the themes evoked and the poetic devices employed to compliment content this essay argues that for Shakespeare, true and enduring

William Shakespeare, an English playwright and poet, is perhaps the most famous writer in the English language. One of his poems, Sonnet 130, is a parody of typical Petrarchan love poetry in which Petrarch often wrote about an idealized woman he loved and worshipped. In Shakespeare’s sonnet, he makes fun of the idea that a woman can be so perfect and so amazing by describing his mistress as a completely average person. This makes the Petrarchan love poems seem silly and false because, as Shakespeare seems to suggest, no one is that perfect and amazing, including Shakespeare’s “mistress”. The last lines of the poem make clear that Shakespeare did not approve of these high, unreasonable standards of the time. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 begins with Shakespeare intentionally comparing his mistress to the unreasonable, exaggerated

In the hands of a master such as Shakespeare, the conventions of the sonnet form are manipulated and transformed into something unique and originally emphasized. Both sonnets in one way or another subvert the conventions of the base Petrarchan sonnet; though they are about love, the traditional topic of sonnets, whilst in Sonnet 20 the object of desire is unattainable and there is no evidence of the level of affection being requited, the target is male, and the target of the poet's affections in Sonnet 130 is the poetic voice's current mistress. It also seems important to note that love in neither of these cases is of the generic youthful female Aryan stereotype, and

The title of the poem “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun” suggests that the speaker is not in love with his ‘mistress’. However, this is not the case. Shakespeare uses figurative language by using criticizing hyperboles to mock the traditional love sonnet. Thus, showing not only that the ideal woman is not always a ‘goddess’, but mocking the way others write about love. Shakespeare proves that love can be written about and accomplished without the artificial and exuberant. The speaker’s tone is ironic, sarcastic, and comical turning the traditional conceit around using satire. The traditional iambic pentameter rhyming scheme of the sonnet makes the diction fall into place as relaxed, truthful, and with elegance in the easy flowing verse. In turn, making this sonnet one of parody and real love.

“False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu! Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew,” (Sir Walter Raleigh). Raleigh portrays the love of poets as false love, which is similar to the way William Shakespeare describes it in Sonnet 130, where he mocks the way other poets exaggerate their muses’ beauty. Though one would assume Shakespeare wrote this sonnet to give to his mistress, he did not, as he was smart enough to know she would never talk to him again if he did. He in fact wrote it to mock Petrarchan sonnets which exaggerated beauty to the point where it was no longer real and it was obvious the poet's love went no deeper than the skin of their mistress. In the sonnet Shakespeare first appears harsh in criticizing his mistress’ beauty, but as the sonnet progresses, he subtly reveals that his love for her is unconditional to ultimately challenge society’s cliched beliefs of love.

“Sonnet 130” has a tone of truthfulness. Throughout the sonnet Shakespeare says somewhat mean but truthful facts about the appearance of his mistress. Even though the statements seem cruel and mean he is speaking the truth and these flaws don’t bother him. The sonnet’s mood is loving. Shakespeare doesn’t have the slightest problem with not having the “prettiest” mistress which is proven by how he talks about her saying things like “black wires grow on her head” (l. 4). He prefers to have a woman with a more beautiful inside rather than outside. Shakespeare’s view on love creates the tone and mood for the sonnet but is also a great

William Shakespeare is recognized for being one of greatest poets of all time. His works are still popular to this day. Many of his works included extended metaphors and similes with rhetorical language and were rooted in the nature of love. Two of his poems that are rather alike, but also very contrastive are “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and “My mistresses’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” They both contain a core theme of love or anti-love in some aspects. While these two poems are built around the same type of subject, their interpretations come across in separate ways. In contrast to Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” which is a serious love poem that contains imagery and metaphors, Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” is more negative and humorous but contains imagery and similes.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Line 1). “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Line 1). These are both two of the famous lines from William Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 and 130. William Shakespeare was an intelligent English playwright, poet, and dramatist during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He is known as one of the greatest playwrights of all time. Sonnet 18 and 130 are two of Shakespeare’s most famous poems. Sonnet 18 is a love poem about how he compares the woman’s love to a summer’s day. Sonnet 130 has a different approach. It is still a comparison, but it seems to be a more spiteful one. These sonnets are both share similar subjects, imagery, theme, and rhyme scheme; however they are more so different in forms and purpose.