Shakespeare s sonnets (130-131)
...ound. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. William Shakespeare Shakespeare is famous for his sonnets. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets have got the same form. It is composed of three quatrains and a terminal couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern (abab cdcd efef gg). It is also called Elizabethan sonnet. It is always composed of 14 lines and 10 syllables. Sonnets 130 and 131 are examples on the Shakespearean sonnet. Sonnet 131 continues the love/hate tone of sonnet 130. In addition they are so alike and similar to each other. Sonnet 130 is a parody of the dark lady. The speaker in Shakespeare’s sonnet expresses the crush on her in a negative comparison, for example (comparing her to natural objects). The speaker says that his beloved’s eyes “are nothing like the sun” and the color of her lips is not as red as coral and also her breasts are so dull when they are compared to snow. In this sonnet the poet is merely amused by his own attempt to deify his dark mistress. He states “I grant I never saw a goddess go; my mistress when she walks , trades on the ground.” We also know that her hair is black but not in the way that the poet describes it “ black wires grow on her head”. But after all that he said a bout her he is still secure in his love for his mistress. However the speaker declares that “by heaven” his love is rare and so valuable “as any she belied with false compare” which means by comparing her to the Elizabethan beauty she is more beautiful. And I think that in this poem he is talking a bout her physical appearance. Sonnet 131 is almost a continuation of the previous one. In sonnet 130 he stresses that his mistress does not possess any of the traditional beauty. In this sonnet he continues talking a bout his mistress. His mistress has got power and she uses it in a very cruel way, so the poem charges the dark lady (mistress) with cruelty. “ As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel” you make “those” fair ones behave with cruel arrogance. But never the less he refers to her as “the fairest...