![]() ![]() In contrast, Sonnet 130 continues to tell the reader just how imperfect is the Poet’s mistress. This is a standard show of the stereotype of the eternal loveliness and fairness of the subject of a sonnet. The poet’s beloved is eternal, though, and not even death will be able to take away the beauty. Nature can change at any point so that the day’s fairness is gone. Though both follow the form of a sonnet, only sonnet 18 seems to be giving readers what they expect. Though sonnet 18 seems to be following the unspoken rules of sonnets, 130 is definitely breaking the expectations of the reader set up by the form of the poetry.īoth poems continue on the theme begun in the first couplet right up through line 12. In direct contrast to sonnet 18, Shakespeare is saying that his love is not at all as beautiful as the sun. This is definitely not the image of perfection a reader might have expected from the opening lines of a sonnet. It reads: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun / Coral is far more red than her lips’ red” (Sonnet 130, 1-2). This is why the opening couplet of sonnet 130 is so strikingly different. The hyperbole would be expected by Elizabethan readers. Shakespeare’s love is more beautiful and temperate than a summer’s day. Sonnet 18 begins with the couplet: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (Sonnet 18, 1-2). One difference between the two poems is that while Sonnet 18 at first appears to use traditional imagery of beauty, Sonnet 130 immediately breaks with what the reader is expecting. In Sonnets 18 and 130, Shakespeare uses the standard form of the poetry to set up expectations of what he is going to say, and writes poetry that breaks those expectations, though they do so in different ways.Both poems use the standard Shakespearean sonnet form, but different imagery to break expectation. The reason that Shakespeare’s poetry is so great, however, is not that it is the standard upon which stereotypes are based, but rather that Shakespeare uses those standard forms to highlight the fact that he does not write stereotypical poetry. A sonnet has a form that needs to be met in order to call itself a sonnet. The images of beauty and love in western poetry are pretty stereotypical, and the Shakespearean sonnet seems to be just as stereotypical a way to tell of a woman’s beauty as are those images.
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