Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 by design mocks the traditional love poems of Shakespeare’s times. More traditional love poems were rife with exaggerated comparisons that extolled the beauty of the beloved. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 outright makes fun of such things in lines like the opening: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;” (1). While much of his poem is spent describing her lover’s shortcomings, in the end he claims to love her.
Shakespearean sonnets are fourteen lines long and consist of four parts (Kennedy n.p.; Owen 260). The first three parts known as quatrains each consist of four lines and have ABAB/CDCD/EFEF patterns respectively. The Shakespearean sonnet ends with a couplet: a two-line section with a CC rhyming pattern. Generally each of the three quatrains creates a series of descriptors, usually metaphors or similes, which provide a complete picture of the object of the poem. The couplet, then, summarizes the writer’s thoughts (Kennedy n.p.; Owen 260).
In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare opens with a quatrain wherein each line describes his lover’s shortcomings. We begin to get a non-picture: her eyes are not like the sun, her lips are not red and beautiful, her skin is not white but rather a tannish, sandy color, and she has black wiry hair.
Moving to the second quatrain, the image becomes even clearer. Lines 5-6 reference a tendency among writers of love poetry to compare their lover’s cheeks to redness of a rose, suggesting high color in them. Shakespeare, however, says his mistress does not remind him of a rose at all because she doesn’t have that kind of color in her cheeks. He then talks about how she smells, which is not very pleasant and certainly not reminiscent of sweet-smelling perfumes (Shakespeare 7-8).
In the third quatrain it begins to be clear that Shakespeare (9-12) is not making fun of his lover. He is, however, being realistic. Her voice is not compared to music, but still he loves to hear it. And he says she is not a goddess, but a woman who lives here with him.
Finally, in the couplet, Shakespeare (13-14) makes it clear this is a woman – a real woman – he loves very much. He has not made false comparisons but loves her as she is. And he believes her to be rare among women (i.e., special in her own way) and better than those women who are described by overt exaggeration. In short, he loves her for who she is.
Like sonnets, Arthurian legend is filled with romance (Pearsall 22). Stories based on Arthur and his knights are filled with the ideas of noble love and beautiful women courted by honorable men. Among the many authors who have told the story of Camelot, Tennyson may be among the best known.
Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the poetry of King Arthur during the nineteenth century. Like Shakespearean sonnets, his descriptions were colorful and often highly exaggerated. He did not follow the same form, having more of a free style with no predictable number of lines or rhyming scheme as guides sonnets. He did, however, use colorful language.
In “The Coming of Arthur” Tennyson described Guinevere as the “fairest of all flesh on earth” (3). Like the sonnets Shakespeare mocked as being too exaggerated, it is not possible to have made such a statement without some understanding of exaggerating a statement. Later, in “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere: A Fragment” Tennyson again indulges in the exaggerations popular in sonnets when he describes Guinevere as being “a part of joyous spring” (23). Like the romantic sonnets of the poets before him, Tennyson takes great liberties and provides little literal description, but instead paints a picture of beauty and character so perfect no mere description will do and as such metaphors must be used to truly do the characteristics of the subject justice.
Works Cited
Kennedy, William J. Lyric Poetry. Oxford Bibliographies. Web. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0152.xml
Owens, Brenda (ed.). Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature, 2009. Print. St. Paul: EMC Publishing.
Pearsall, Derek. Arthurian Romance: A Short Introduction, 2008. Web. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9780470775998;jsessionid=9C602093EACF015B41E087A4DC3745FD.f04t02
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare Sonnets: All 154 of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 2013. Print. Charleston, SC: Createspace.
Tennyson, Alfred. “The Coming of Arthur.” The Camelot Project, 1842. Online. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/tennyson-coming-of-arthur
Tennyson, Alfred. “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere: A Fragment.” The Camelot Project, 1842. Online. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/tennyson-sir-launcelot-and-queen-guinevere
