Sonnet 130 - Shakespeare - Poetry Flashcards
What is Sonnet 130’s message about love?
You don’t have to be beautiful and perfect to be loved by someone - Shakespeare uses 3 quatrains to describe his loves shortcomings but then only needs the couplet to dismiss all those as irrelevant, thus giving his feelings more strength.
What form is Sonnet 130?
Shakespearean sonnet & iambic pentameter - constant beat and regularity allows the poet to develop his idea about his subject.
Shakespeare uses cliched views of beauty and claims his love does not mirror these. This poem criticises cliches.
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.”
Shakespeare using a mocking tone throughout to dismiss the cliched views of beauty - for example claiming she is not like a goddess when she walks, making her sound unattractive (“treads”).
“I grant I never saw a goddess go: / My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.”
Shakespeare dismisses all the cliches he laid out in the poem as necessary to love somebody and to find beauty in a person, something he claims he sees in his love, swearing “by heaven”, despite her imperfections.
“And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare.”
What is the effect of Shakespeare thinking his lover to still be beautiful “by heaven”.
By swearing his love “by heaven”, it is immediately elevated and his lover put on a pedestal, despite the fact that the entire poem he has been pointing out her shortcomings.
