Commentary on Sonnet 130 Essay

Essay: William Shakespeare- Sonnet 130

The poem Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare is about love, but it talks about it in a very different way than most love poems do. That is because it contains irony and parody as stylistic devices. It compares the mistress the speaker of the poem loves beautiful things, although the womans features are the opposite of beauty. In the first quatrain the speaker says her eyes are "nothing like the sun," her lips are less red than coral, her breasts are dun-colored compared to white snow, and her hairs are like black wires on her head. In the second quatrain the speaker says he has seen roses separated by color, but he cannot see such roses in his mistress's cheeks. He also says the breath that "reeks" from his mistress is less delightful than perfume. In the third quatrain he admits that music "hath a far more pleasing sound" than her voice, although he loves her voice and that his mistress walks on the ground, not like a goddess. In the couplet, however, the speaker claims to love his mistress.

This poem is written in the traditional Shakespearean sonnet form which means that it has three quatrains, which all consist of alternate rhymes, and a closing couplet. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ababcdcdefefgg and the metre is an iamb as it is typical for sonnets.

In the first quartrain only body features of the mistress the poem is about are listed, then in the second quartrain the mistress can breath which is a metaphor for her getting alive and in the third one she can even talk, so there is a notional progression within the sequence of the poem. In this way the form and the content of the sonnet are closely connected. The couplet is the climax or the conclusion.

When the speaker says: My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun it actually is something negative, just like when he says that her breasts are dun or that she walks treads on the ground. By listing the body parts of the woman and negative features of her which poets or men who are in love usually never name the Petrarchan beauty catalogue is parodied. The body and other features like the breath of the mistress are compared with beautiful things, although they are the opposite.

In the couplet the speaker swears that he loves his mistress. He loves her because she is rare and not because of false or exaggarated beautiful features.