Jane Wong

ENG 120
Professor Sides
23rd September, 2013

An Analysis of Sonnet 130

Sonnet 130 is an anti-love poem that distorts all the conventional Petrarchan
similes in a sort of parody that denies the mistress's beauty, and, instead, portrays her
as a realistic, flawed woman of flesh and blood who "treads on the ground".
The first four quatrains can be seen as a parody of the Petrarchan sonnet, the
characteristic of which was the heavy use of similes in a rich, lavish language, to
describe the poets lovers beauty. In this sonnet, Shakespeare writes in a series of
such similes, such as
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
and then, immediately, breaks them down, as shown by the next line,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks.
Shakespeare paints his lover to be no ethereal beauty, unlike Patrarchs Laura or
Dantes Beatrice, and that .
Considering this, the simplest, and most common interpretation of the final
couplet is that Shakespeare is simply expressing his undying and true love for his
lover, saying that he can see past her deviations from perfection in so many ways.
The second-last line,
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
re-establishes his lovers worth that she is "rare", unlike the women in other sonnets,
who are described with the same stock clichs used to describe a womans beauty.

Jane Wong
ENG 120
Professor Sides
23rd September, 2013

Another interpretation can be that he is criticizing romantic relationships at the

time, which are based on a focus on outward, aesthetic beauty glorified by the
Petrarchan similes, saying that kind of love is false. The use of the word belied
also emphasizes the sense of trickery and disguise. The use of caesura in the second
last line emphasizes his exclamation of And yet by heaven, highlighting his
disappointment at societys notion of love, which he finds fickle and despicable, even.
Shakespeares love for his mistress, on the other hand, comes from the bottom of his
hear and is real and truthful, which, ironically, is rare at the time, as shown by the
extravagant similes he mentioned in the earlier lines of this poem, and which are so
often used at the time. Rare also implies that Shakespeares love for his mistress is
more worthy than the love other poets express through their overly dramatic
portrayals of theirs that it transcends the exaggerated nature of conventional
complements, and so implies the real loveliness of his mistress.
Taking this further, some might even interpret his final line as a criticism of the
lady herself. He might be saying that his love for her is finer than any of her vain
pretenses, manufactured falsely for the world. However, I still see the final line to be
a criticism to societys fakeness and focus on appearances, rather than to his lady love.
Taking all interpretations into account, I think the final couplet of this poem is
not only a confession of love to the poets lover, but an exploration of love and
romance at the time. Throughout the poem, the way Shakespeare defies and
contradicts these exaggerations suggests a kind of frankness which a deeper moral and
emotional value. His sonnet is more gracious and genuine by being more negative on
the surface, because it portrays an image of a real, unique woman.