My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun Diction

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.

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.

William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love Is Not All” both attempt to define love, by telling what love is and what it is not. Shakespeare’s sonnet praises love and speaks of love in its most ideal form, while Millay’s poem begins by giving the impression that the speaker feels that love is not all, but during the unfolding of the poem we find the ironic truth that love is all. Shakespeare, on the other hand, depicts love as perfect and necessary from the beginning to the end of his poem. Although these two authors have taken two completely different approaches, both have worked to show the importance of love and to define it. However, Shakespeare is most confident of his definition of love, while Millay seems

“Sonnet 116” written by William Shakespeare is focusing on the strength and true power of love. Love is a feeling that sustainable to alterations, that take place at certain points in life, and love is even stronger than a breakup because separation cannot eliminate feelings. The writer makes use of metaphors expressing love as a feeling of mind not just heart as young readers may see it. To Shakespeare love is an immortal felling that is similar to a mark on a person’s life.

Unlike Sonnet 18, Shakespeare utterly abandons the poetic convention of Petrarchan conceit in Sonnet 130. In this poem, Shakespeare denies his mistress all of the praises Renaissance poets customarily attributed to their lovers. The first quatrain is filled exclusively with the Shakespeare's seeming insults of his mistress. While Sir Thomas Wyatt authors a poem entitled "Avising the Bright Beams of These Fair Eyes," in the first line of Sonnet 130, Shakespeare affirms that his "mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." John Wootton, in a poem published in England's Helicon, boasts that his love has "lips like scarlet of the finest dye," but in Sonnet 130 , Shakespeare is sure that his beloved's lips are not nearly quite as red as coral (11; 2). Michael Drayton, in his poem, To His Coy Love, begs his lover, "Show me no more those snowy

Inner conflicts often dictate what the narrator wants, but cannot have, which creates the overall attitude of the poem. The narrator struggles to look at this woman because his "eyes take no delight to range/ about the gleam which on your face do grow" (3-4). He is not able to look at her even though she is beautiful due to the heartbreak that she left him with. This attitude carries on throughout the poem where he acknowledges her beauty but is unwilling to be hurt by her again. He is in agony from the emotions that she inflicts, and the readers see his mental process of working through it as he comes to the conclusion that he will "wink or else hold down my head" because it is her eyes that cause his "bale" (14-15). His attitude changes from being at war with his inner feelings to being accepted to the fact that if he looks at her he will be in danger of being hurt a second time. The irony being applied shows how his conflicted attitude is made clear by acknowledging that he will not give in to his desire despite what his repressed emotions are saying. Irony can be highly influential in discovering the narrator's hidden agenda and purposes, and the words chosen to reveal these purposes have an impact on the overall attitude of a piece of

From the first line to line ten, Shakespeare describes his mistress not as the typical ideal woman, but as someone ordinary. He expresses this especially in the fourth line where he uses personification to compare her hair to black wires. Some of the things he says are; that her eyes are not shiny, her lips are not red, her breast are brown instead of the perfect white, her breath odor is unpleasant and her voice is not melodious. He does this to make his poem stand out from the crowd, and also to not make it exactly as other love poems, such as Bradstreet’s. He wants his poem to be more humorous and realistic.

“To His Coy Mistress” is a masterpiece to show the courtship of the man on a mistress. In the first stanza, hyperbole with a multitude of allusion shows its admiration of the woman. For example, If the time is not a limit, he will love her forever, from time of “the Flood” to “the conversion of Jews.” The allusions, which refer to objects outside the poem itself, dramaticize his frivolous determination to love her forever. In the second stanza, understatement is extensively used to show the ironically desperation to pursue her for sex.

The structure and tone of the poem enhance the conflict and hopelessness the speaker is feeling towards the woman he loves and desires. For the first twelve lines of the poem there is an “abab” rhyming pattern. This ties into the despairing and desirable tone and how the rhyming scheme can be an example of the speaker constantly going back and forth between emotions for this women. For example, “And that mine eyes take no delight to range About the gleams which on your face do grow.” (Gascoigne 3-4) are two phrases that contradict the speakers feelings. Stating that his eyes take no delight in range can refer to the speaker finding no use or happiness in looking at the woman. Although, he then mentions the gleams upon her face growing, giving the audience the idea that even though the speakers love for the woman causes him deep despair, he still desires her enough to describe her features in attentive detail; in this example the gleams on her face. This shows the back and forth pattern and the speakers struggle when it comes

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

has the gentle heart of a woman but is not inconsistent as is the way

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.

The Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day “ is around the most admired and prominent of the 154 poems of William Shakespeare . Most researchers concur that the true recipient of the lyric, the mate of pleasant toward oneself, whom the artist is composing, is a man, however the sonnet is generally used to portray a lady. In the piece, the pleasant toward oneself contrasts his adoration with a June through August, and contends that his affection is superior to summer (Kennedy & Gioia). He additionally states that your beau will live everlastingly through the expressions of the lyric. Researchers have discovered parallels between this poem and sonnets Tristia and Amores of Ovid . A few interpretations have uncovered

“Sonnet 130” written by William Shakespeare, is one of his most well known poems and can be analyzed and broken apart in great depth. The poem is written in fourteen lines which makes it a sonnet. Like all of Shakespeare’s sonnets the meter is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme for “Sonnet 130” is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. An overlaying theme for “Sonnet 130” is, “True love is based on how beautiful you find someone on the inside.” Shakespeare proves to have a great view on true love in this sonnet. He cares more about what’s on the inside rather than what’s on the outside. “Sonnet 130’s” theme can be proven by Shakespeare's use of poetic and literary devices, the tone and mood of the sonnet, and the motif of true love.

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.