User blog:PitaKang/Funday Monday 4: Analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130

Yes, I am using this to get some peer-reviewing about my essay... please forgive me :P. I'm also a day late but that's because my internet went out yesterday... so please help me on the essay. This is the very very rough draft, I wrote it in like an hour. I need some ideas and I need to know how I can improve. Thanks! (This is due Thursday so please help :P)

Sonnet 130 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

“Things are beautiful if you love them” (Jean Anouilh). In Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, Shakespeare at first implies that he seeks ideal beauty by insulting his mistress because she doesn’t fit into his vision of an ideal woman. But as the poem progresses, the speaker begins to doubt the idea of ideal beauty and eventually expresses his love for his less-than-ideal mistress while discarding the cliched concept of ideal beauty. Shakespeare uses language and structure to show that love is a complex thing, not the ideal beauty sought after by most people of the time.

Shakespeare uses language and structure to show that love is complex and that ideal beauty is unrealistic. He begins the sonnet with a scathing series of lines that blast his mistress for not possessing ideal beauty. Many poets compared their mistress’ eyes to the sun and their lips to corals, indicating that their mistresses possess ideal beauty. They also valued the color white, and the more white a person, the more beautiful they were. Shakespeare’s mistress’ eyes, lips, breasts, hair, cheeks, breath, voice and walk are all contrasted with descriptions of deal beauty. He mentions that his mistress’ eyes are “nothing like the sun” and that “coral is far more red than her lips’ red”. He then goes on to lament on the fact that while snow is white, “her breasts are dun”. He compares hair to “black wires” growing from her head. Her cheeks do not have the red color of a rose, and her breath smells nothing like perfume. Music sounds much better than her voice, and she is nothing like a goddess. In short, she fits none of the criteria of ideal beauty.

However, in lines 13 and 14, Shakespeare abruptly changes his language and structure. Going away from contrasting his mistress to unrealistic goals such as the sun or coral, he says that he still loves her even though she doesn’t have ideal beauty. He says that he “thinks his love as rare”, which is certainly true since most people loved beautiful women. He then goes on to say, “as any she belied with false compare”. None of her features fit those of ideal beauty, but in Shakespeare’s eyes, to say those things about a woman is to belie, or misrepresent her, to lie about her.

In conclusion, Shakespeare in Sonnet 130 uses language and structure to convey the complex nature of love and the unrealisticness of ideal beauty. The speaker shows that his mistress does not fit ideal beauty at all, but proclaims at the end that such beauty is unreasonable and to say such things about a woman is to lie and misrepresent her.