19 pages • 38 minutes read
William ShakespeareSonnet 130
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The poem’s author and the name assigned to the poem tell the reader a great deal about the form and meter. The poem is a sonnet, and since its author is William Shakespeare, it’s a Shakespearian sonnet: It represents Shakespeare’s version of the sonnet. The poem has three quatrains, or three parts consisting of four lines. The poem also has a concluding couplet that clarifies what the other 12 lines were about. In “Sonnet 130,” Shakespeare uses the last couplet to tell the reader that he hasn’t spent the previous 12 lines demeaning his mistress. Rather, the first 12 lines represent his drive to not expose his mistress to “false compare” (Line 14). The speaker and the mistress have a “rare” (Line 13) love, and the speaker doesn’t want to hide their bond with artificial imagery.
Although “Sonnet 130” features a woman absent of a “pleasing sound” (Line 10), the meter and rhyme scheme is quite pleasing. Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter, so there’s an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, which equals a foot, and each line has five feet or five pairs of unstressed-stressed syllables. The poem also has an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme, which adds to the poem’s rhythm. The carefully organized form, meter, and rhyme conflict with the less-than-perfect picture of the mistress. The mistress isn’t like the sun, snow, coral, roses, or music—and she’s not like a sonnet either.
Allusion
Allusion is a literary device that helps the poet tackle complex issues without explicitly naming them. In “Sonnet 130,” the speaker never mentions the word “beauty,” yet the poem centers on the mistress’s looks and how she doesn’t look like women from other love sonnets. By not using the specific word “beauty,” the speaker shows how beauty emerges through symbols and things. The handful of colors allude to beauty since red, white, and so on are colors typically connected to an attractive woman, while “dun” (Line 3) and “black” (Line 4) aren’t colors that historically link to beauty. The items and objects also help allude to beauty since “roses” (Line 6), “perfumes” (Line 7), and “music” (Line 10) tie into standard representations of a striking woman.
With allusion, the speaker maintains the mysterious message of the poem. Since the speaker never directly calls his mistress beautiful, it feels like the speaker is calling his mistress not beautiful even though he never says that either. With the final couplet, the speaker clarifies the allusions. He’s not making fun of the looks of his mistress but trying to do them justice. She is beautiful, and the speaker doesn’t want to denigrate her alluded beauty with “false compare” (Like 14) or fake comparisons.
Irony
Irony is a literary device where the poet upends the reader’s assumptions. The poet builds their poem by challenging expectations with a surprising, unanticipated truth or message. The irony of “Sonnet 130” centers on the idea of beauty and the genre of a love sonnet. Typically, a love sonnet praises the looks of the beloved—in this case, a woman—by associating her with colors like white and red or things like music and perfumes. Shakespeare’s love sonnet does the opposite: He negates any comparison between his mistress and these supposedly alluring ideals.
The gulf between presumptions about beauty and love and the speaker’s idea about beauty and love shapes the irony of the poem, which becomes clear in the edifying final couplet. Ironically, or surprisingly, the speaker loves his mistress because she doesn’t conform to stereotypical notions of beauty. He loves his mistress because she’s a real human being, and the speaker doesn’t want to corrupt her authentic beauty with “false compare” (Line 14). The expectation is that the woman isn’t beautiful. In reality, the woman is beautiful. What’s not beautiful are the countless poems that fetishistically praise women’s looks.
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By William Shakespeare
