Noelle Mejias
ENH 206-83274
Professor Jennifer Durando
October 14, 2013
Imperfection is Beauty
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 demasked, 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 pleasins 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.
-William Shakespeare
In William Shakespeares "Sonnet 130" Shakespeare presents a speaker who talks about his mistress who does not embody the ideal form of beauty.
William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress, plate 2, fr...
Eugène Delacroix's 1825 painting "Louis d'Orléan...
English: Sonnet XXX of William Shakespeare on a wa...Shakespeares poem is a sonnet with fourteen lines that is diveded into three quatrains and one couplet at the end. During Shakespeare's era most love poems were made to praise their muse and point out their flawless characterestics. However, Shakespeare does the exact oppostie, he takes the sonnet to a deeper level by illustrating the importance of inner beauty. In the first three quatrains the reader is able to tell that "Sonnet 130" isnt an ordinary love poem but the sonnet takes a dramatic turn in the final couplet when the speaker expresses his mistress is "rare" (Sonnet 130 13). Although "Sonnet 130" isnt the ideal love poem of Shakespeares day, there are deeper meanings to his unusual comparissons.
The speaker introduces the mistress in the first line...