Analysis-Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare Essay Example

grey. In the last line of this quatrain we could see again how he isn’t describing her as a perfect person, he tells us that her hair is like black wires and that her hair does not seem as nice as silky smooth hair.

Shakespeare is giving metaphors and “odd use” as instead of comparing his mistress to something, he is comparing her to something she is not. This literary device makes the reader have a better image of her and to see how he still loves all her imperfections. “I have seen roses damask’s, 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. ” In this second quatrain he tells us more about the imperfections of her love.

Here he starts using more realistic ideas. He tells us that he have experience the beautiful pink colour and the wonderful smell of damask roses, but on her mistress he didn’t see such roses on her, because her cheeks were pale and her smell was very unpleasant. “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: In this third quatrain we can see a “Volta” which is a turning point on the sonnet.

We could see that after all of that criticism the author starts to get a little bit nicer. In the first line of this third quatrain we could see that he admits he

love hearing her speak, it is like a compliment for her, but immediately he starts to back up a little and comes back to reality when he says “yet well I know” and in line 10 as we are used along the poem, we get the negative half of that thought: he thinks that music is "more pleasing" than the sound of her voice.

In line 11, the speaker uses alliteration (grant, goddess, go) and a hyperbole by comparing her mistress with a goddess, to tell us that he has never seen a goddess move. Throughout line 12, he gives the sonnet another strike of reality by telling as that her love doesn’t float along like a goddess, she just walks like a normal person on the ground. Again being very realistic and simple in the way of how she talks about her mistress And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare In this last couplet the author summaries his whole point. He shows us that he loves her exactly as those other poets who exaggerate and give false descriptions of their mistresses only to make them sound “perfect”, she describes her unperfected mistress but with reality, he thinks it doesn’t make sense to compare women to appearances which they can possible live up to, because nobody is perfect but they are still able to be loved.

The rhyme scheme is typical of a sonnet, it has an (abab, cdcd, efef, gg) 14 line rhyme structure , this type of rhyme helps us understand better the poem and enjoy it more, as it gives an

more interesting and organize effect. Shakespeare uses hyperbole, metaphors and comparisons as literary devices to develop the point we want to give on this sonnet, as the same time this literacy devices create a more interesting effect, as it gives the reader the opportunity to be more open minded and have better images of what the speaker is talking about, and don’t have an abstract image of it.

In conclusion, we can see how Shakespeare doesn’t use false comparisons, he avoids the unrealistic adjectives which could be find in other sonnets of authors describing how perfect her mistress is, he instead prefers to give the reader a more honest description about the women he loves. He describes all her imperfections but he still loves her just the way she is.