“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 clichéd 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.
Sonnet 130 is the poet's pragmatic tribute to
his uncommonly mistress, commonly referred to as the dark lady because of her
dun complexion. The dark lady, who ultimately betrays the poet, appears in sonnets
127 to 154. Sonnet 130 is clearly a parody of the conventional love sonnet,
made popular by Petrarch and, in particular, made popular in England by
Sidney's use of the Petrarchan form in his epic poem Astrophel and Stella.
The
majority of the poem gives negative connotations. The sun, red coral, snow,
roses, perfumes, music, and a goddess all bring to mind beautiful images, but
the speaker’s mistress’ eyes, lips, breasts, cheeks, breath, voice, and walk
are all contrasted with the descriptions of loveliness. Her eyes do not shine,
her lips are not red, her breasts are not white, her cheeks are pale, her
breath stinks, she does not have a pleasant voice, and she does walk gracefully
as a goddess would. The speaker seems to be viewing his mistress disdainfully,
as if he is not attracted to her, and after reading the first twelve lines, a
sense of indignation and perhaps sorrow for this woman who is so ugly that not
even her lover describes her as being pretty is felt (141). The images serve to
make the sonnet come to life because the readers can “see” the comparisons
through the use of descriptive words.
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| The dark Lady |
The
speaker announces that he loves her, independent from the ideals of beauty men
had. In this line we find the height of his comparison in nature and meaning:
the “heaven” (l. 13). His love is higher than anything he was comparing her
with previously. For the speaker she is much worth and he loves her more than
anybody who “belied” (l. 14) her with “false compare” (l. 14). This last line
is an attack on men who think a woman is only an object to look on, not a
person to look into. The value of a woman is dependent on the thing you compare
her with. Even if the mistress does not accord with the typical comparisons men
used in the speaker’s times, she still can be beautiful in his eyes. Either
because of her pretty visual nature, which he just needs to compare with
different precious things, or because of her wonderful inner values, which we
cannot see immediately but have to find out.
WilliamShakespeare’s poem is a sonnet with fourteen lines, typically for a
Shakespearean sonnet it is divided in three quatrains and one couplet in the
end. The rhyme scheme in the quatrains is a cross rhyme (abab cdcd efef) and
the last two lines are a rhyming couplet (gg). William Shakespeare uses an
iambic pentameter throughout the poem. Its formal regularity makes this sonnet
look like a representative love poem for the time William Shakespeare lived,
but having a scrutiny on the words and their meanings it becomes clear that
this sonnet is totally different.
In
conclusion, Shakespeare in Sonnet 130 uses language and structure to convey the
complex nature of love. Shakespeare wrote this poem although it was unusual
for a man to see a woman as a multidimensional character. Women were supposed
to delight men with a lovely face and body. But to fall in love with a woman
because she was smart or intellectual was totally untypical.
The
