Sonnet 130

Overview

Sonnet 130 is a love poem in which the speaker describes his lover in a realistic way rather than using exaggerated compliments. Although he points out that she does not match traditional ideals of beauty, the poem ends by showing that his love for her is genuine and deep.

Main themes

The poem explores love and romance, admiration, idealisation, exaggeration, flattery and falseness. It suggests that true love is based on real feelings rather than unrealistic comparisons or perfect appearances.

Tone and voice

The tone is matter-of-fact, satirical and sometimes sarcastic, but also sincere, affectionate and intimate. The speaker speaks in the first person and presents an honest view of the person he loves.

Context

Shakespeare wrote at a time when many love poems exaggerated female beauty through comparisons with pearls, stars, flowers and other perfect images. Sonnet 130 challenges this tradition and can be read as both a criticism of exaggerated love poetry and a celebration of genuine love. The poem is linked to Shakespeare's mysterious ‘Dark Lady’, although her true identity is unknown.

Form and structure

The poem is an Elizabethan (Shakespearean) sonnet consisting of 14 lines arranged into three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet. It is written mainly in iambic pentameter. The volta, or turning point, comes in the final couplet beginning with "And yet", where the speaker reveals his true feelings.

Poetic devices to spot

• Simile – Shakespeare introduces comparisons, then immediately rejects them, such as “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun”.

• Metaphor – traditional images such as roses, perfume and music are mentioned but dismissed as unrealistic comparisons.

• Litotes (understatement) – the poem avoids exaggeration and uses deliberately understated descriptions.

• Symbolism – references to “snow” and “dun” challenge traditional ideas about beauty and purity.

• End-stopped lines – many lines end with a pause, creating a direct and factual style.

• Volta– the final couplet changes the direction of the poem and reveals the speaker's genuine love.

by William Shakespeare

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.

The text of this poem is available in the CCEA Poetry Anthology, which can be downloaded from the CCEA website.

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A sonnet in which the speaker discusses how physically ordinary his beloved is when compared to exaggerated poems about female beauty, but how he genuinely loves her anyway. First published in 1609, but thought to have been written well over a decade earlier.

• Title: Like many sonnets, this one is known only by its number or by its first line, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”.
• Themes: Love and romance, admiration, flattery and falseness, idealisation, exaggeration, initial attraction vs true emotion.
• Tone: Matter-of-fact, satirical, possibly mocking or sarcastic, genuine, sincere, affectionate, self-aware, intimate.
• Speaker:First person; the speaker is an anonymous character or persona, who may or may not have been based on Shakespeare’s own life or experiences.

• Shakespeare is so renowned as a playwright and poet that his influence remains worldwide in theatre and literature, over four centuries after he first wrote and performed. He was married, but his family resided in Stratford while he worked in London, and many scholars believe he had affairs with both women and men, to some of whom he dedicated famous sonnets such as this one.
• While we can’t be sure of the date of the sonnet, some speculate this may have been written in 1592, during a period when plague outbreaks had closed the theatres of London and Shakespeare couldn’t earn a living. If so, it’s possible that not having to focus on daily work led to him to think more deeply about love. This sonnet is one of a group all dedicated not to his wife but to the ‘Dark Lady’, a woman with dark hair and skin who captivates the speaker. No one knows for sure who she was, or even if she really existed. It’s possible she was a kind of made-up ‘muse’ or inspirational figure Shakespeare used as a focal point to write about feelings he had experienced in real-life relationships.
• There was a long tradition of poetry written by men that praised the good looks of women they loved by comparing them to ridiculous ideals – having teeth like pearls, hair like gold, eyes like stars and so forth. The idea of women metaphorically being made up of desirable objects was supposed to idealise their beauty, but it became so clichéd that others began to mock how excessive and insincere it was. In 1590, Sir Philip Sidney published Astrophil and Stella, a series of sonnets which followed in the tradition of exaggerating the woman’s beauty. Writing soon after this, Shakespeare was one of many who wanted to upend this tradition. His Sonnet 130 can be read as a sarcastic takedown of hyperbolic love poetry, but also as a genuine insight into what true love means – feeling strongly about a person even though they are not perfect.

• Sonnet 130 is an Elizabethan sonnet, whose fourteen lines are arranged in three quatrains (four line sets of alternately rhyming lines) and a final rhyming couplet. This form was not invented by Shakespeare but he popularised it so much it is also known as a Shakespearean sonnet. Sonnets were a classic form for love poetry.
• Another conventional aspect of an Elizabethan sonnet in Sonnet 130 is that the volta occurs the last rhyming couplet, beginning with “And yet”. This allows for Shakespeare to build the reader’s expectations in one way – that he thinks his own mistress is unattractive – before revealing the final ‘twist’ that despite her seeming to lack the exaggerated idealised beauty of other poets’ lovers, he feels deep and genuine love for her just as she is.
• The poetic metre of Sonnet 130 is almost entirely iambic pentameter, the usual metre for classic sonnets. One ‘iamb’ is a two-beat combination: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed (emphasised) syllable, making a ‘da-DUM’ pattern, like a heartbeat. Pentameter means five of these two-beat units per line, making ten syllables altogether:
  
  

  | I all | a- lone | be- weep | my out- | cast state |
  | da- DUM | da- DUM | da- DUM | da- DUM | da- DUM |

  
  
  The ‘heartbeat’ of iambic pentameter means it is perfect for love poems, helping the rhythm and form of the poem reflect the subject matter.

• Simile: Shakespeare’s use of simile in this sonnet is a little unusual. We usually expect a simile to compare two things by saying one resembles or reminds us of the other, making a connection between them. Shakespeare instead sets up a comparison between two separate things – his mistress’s eyes and the sun – but immediately severs the connection he introduced, by saying they are in fact not like each other at all. He is using a simile set-up but subverting the conventional use of an actual simile. This makes for a surprising opening line if we think we are about to read a conventional flattering love poem. It may amuse the reader to see him reject the expected approach and instead use understated, maybe even insulting terms for the person he is supposed to care about. It may also help convince readers that his feelings are true love – not just because he takes such a different approach, but because he sees her as she really is and loves a real version of her, not an exaggerated or idealised one.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

• Metaphor: As with the simile in line one, Shakespeare uses metaphor in an unexpected way by negating or discarding the comparison he chose instead of saying his mistress resembles it. An example of this is the discussion of “roses” – he speaks of “red and white” roses that are “damasked” like expensive embroidered fabric, creating imagery of a rich and rosy complexion. However, he then states in a matter-of-fact tone: “but no such roses see I in her cheeks”, throwing away the metaphorical comparison he set up. His choices of comparison for both his similes and metaphors are recognised clichés of romance poetry – the sun, flowers, perfume, music. He brings them up but then rejects them as irrelevant, which highlights their silliness as points of comparison and suggests he sees his lover as she really is, with no metaphors required to make her seem more worthy. At the end of the poem he uses the term “false compare” to harshly judge those who exaggerate their flattery with over-the-top metaphors, claiming these “belie” or do no justice to their subjects.
• Litotes: Shakespeare is criticising the use of hyperbole by other poets. In contrast he employs litotes, an understatement in which a positive statement is expressed by negating its opposite. For example, a person might use the phrase “not bad” to mean that something was actually quite good. For every conventional – and over-exaggerated – description borrowed from other writers, Shakespeare finds a way of undermining it. The idea of “roses damasked, red and white” is presented as an attractive image; he then undermines this by saying “no such roses see I in her cheeks”, implying her complexion is dull and lacks the pink glow associated with youth and happiness. By defining something only by what it isn’t, litotes helps to create a modest, understated effect, which is consistent with the poet’s intention to puncture the tradition of overblown love poetry and create something more true to life.
• Symbolism: The line “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun” can be read both literally and metaphorically. ‘Dun’ refers to a tan brown colour, suggesting the speaker’s lover could have a deep tan, or be a person of colour or of mixed race (especially since she is noted to have black hair). In Shakespeare’s time, pale skin not only signified higher social status (since upper class women wouldn’t have to work outdoors in fields or markets like working class women) but held significance as a symbol of purity. The women praised in hyperbolic sonnets were often idealised not only in physical beauty but in moral purity; by contrast, Shakespeare hints that his lover is not pure and untouched, but passionate and sexual – traits that would have been considered improper in an Elizabethan woman. Shakespeare could be describing the reality of his lover’s complexion or drawing attention to how ridiculous skin that is literally ‘white as snow’ would be on a person; either way, he is probably also rejecting the symbolism of white skin as meaning virginity and virtue.
• End-stopped lines: The opening lines of the poem are end-stopped, describing one physical feature of his mistress per line. This gives the impression he has thought carefully about what he has to say – there is no digression, development or description, but simple statement of fact. He avoids flowery language as much as he avoids hyperbole; the end-stopped lines are self-contained and to the point. The fact each one is separated as a discrete thought from the previous one helps to give a sense of the mistress’s features being individually scrutinised. This would mimic the way in which the classic flattering love poems metaphorically broke their ‘beloved’ subjects into pieces to study and compare, rather than seeing them as a whole person. Later in the poem, the end-stopped lines are less frequent and are alternated with enjambed lines, suggesting a freer flow of thought and giving a sense of the ‘whole person’ that he loves, rather than separate features.

This is not a list of every method or notable use of language and structure in Sonnet 130.

Look at the poem again. Can you find any of the following?

If you have found these methods, consider what you know about the poem and the poet already.

What effects do these methods create? Why has he used them?

• How Do I Love Thee – also a sonnet; the first person speaker in this poem also considers the object of her love and suggests how real her feelings for him are.
• Funeral Blues – remembrance of a deceased loved one is expressed through metaphors of what they were to the speaker as well a blunt rejection of the usual mourning processes; the idea of what someone is or what something is not provides interesting comparison points for Sonnet 130.
• i carry your heart – Cummings’ overjoyed modernisthyperbole can be meaningfully contrasted with Shakespeare’s resistance to clichéd romantic imagery and his more realistic version of love.

Use these questions to hone your knowledge of Sonnet 130, and to practise using your notes and analysis in organised paragraphs that focus on how particular themes or ideas are shown in the poem. There is an example answer in the following section to demonstrate how you can do this.

• How does Shakespeare create a sense of the speaker’s feelings for his mistress in Sonnet 130?
• What does Sonnet 130 show us about the speaker’s attitude towards love?
• What poetic methods does Shakespeare use to show his feelings about hyperbolic flattery in Sonnet 130?
• How does Shakespeare create a tone of sincerity despite using satire in Sonnet 130?

Below is a demonstration of how to use the material in this section to answer an example essay question. The answer below is not a full essay, but only an extract of a longer answer showing some of the points that could be made.

Q: What does Sonnet 130 show us about the speaker’s feelings towards his mistress?

A: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 is written in the Elizabethan sonnetform: a single stanza of 14 lines featuring iambic pentameter, a regular rhyme scheme and a volta occurring in the last rhyming couplet. Yet, despite its conventional form as a love poem, it treats the subject in an unexpected way. Traditionally, love sonnets admired the object of the poet’s affection from afar and flattered her in exaggerated terms by comparing her to ridiculous ideals – having teeth like pearls, hair like gold, eyes like stars and so forth. The idea of women metaphorically being made up of desirable objects was supposed to idealise their beauty, but it became so clichéd that others began to mock how excessive and insincere it was. Writing in the 1590s, Shakespeare was one of many who wanted to upend this tradition. His Sonnet 130 can be read as a sarcastic takedown of hyperbolic love sonnets, but also as a genuine insight into what true love means – feeling strongly about a person even though they are not perfect. The volta reveals the speaker’s attitude to his mistress as being one of accepting love, thinking her “rare” and special even as he is aware of her flaws.

Shakespeare’s use of simile in this sonnet is a little unusual. We usually expect a simile to compare two things by saying one resembles or reminds us of the other, making a connection between them. Shakespeare instead sets up a comparison between two separate things – his mistress’s eyes and the sun – but immediately severs the connection he introduced, by saying they are in fact not like each other at all. This makes for a surprising opening line if we think we are about to read a conventional flattering love poem. It may amuse the reader to see him reject the expected approach and instead use understated, maybe even insulting terms for the person he is supposed to care about. However, it also helps convince readers that his feelings for the subject of the sonnet are true love – not just because he takes such a different approach, but because he sees her as she really is and loves a real version of her, not an exaggerated or idealised one.

This essay could go on to make the following points, backed up by evidence from the poem and detailed analysis of that evidence:

• Shakespeare uses sensory imagery of sight, sound, smell and texture/touch to show his intimacy with his mistress and how well he knows her, showing a sense of acceptance for her imperfections.
• Shakespeare’s use of symbolism shows he does not employ the association between snow/whiteness/pale skin and virginity or moral virtue for his mistress, which may mean he is portraying her as passionate and sexual, or even as tanned and of low social status – this shows his refusal to elevate her and his preference to describe her in real terms.
• Shakespeare employs end-stopped lines to begin the poem and then picks up the pace with some use of enjambment, showing how his thoughts develop and how he has fuller, more developed feelings for the person he loves than simply praising her separate features.