Analysis of the Sonnet, "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing like the Sun"

Shakespeare does not need to falsely compare his woman to someone divine. He expresses his lady as being simple and able to accept his true love. With his use of traditional Petrarchan writing, Daniel paints a perfect idea of a woman, one who is immortal and unattainable. Shakespeare, on the other hand mocks this style of writing and creates a vision of a more human woman who has flaws and is anything but perfect. In conclusion, these two writers have different views on what true love is, and the kind of woman they admire.

Shak... ... middle of paper ... ... Juliet's well fare, not just what see wants. Shakespeare shows that the Nurse wants Juliet to be safe and happy and that she is not just manipulated by her. As the audience wants the central characters to be together, the Nurse is appreciated much more. This leads back to the introductory statement of Juliet turning her back on both strong female roles but the audience agreeing with her ignoring her mother but feel sympathy towards the Nurse. Shakespeare's tale of Romeo and Juliet is one of love and passion that ends in sadness.

Shakespeare's My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun Many authors compose sonnets about women whom they loved. Most of these authors embellish their women's physical characteristics by comparing them to natural wonders that we, as humans, find beautiful. Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" contradicts this idea, by stating that his mistress lacks most of the qualities other men wrongly praise their women for possessing. Shakespeare presents to one that true love recognizes imperfections and feels devotion regardless of flaws, while satirically expressing his personal thoughts on Petrarchan sonnets. Through the use of comparisons, the English sonnet and an anti-Petrarchan approach, he creatively gets his point across.

In Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, the speaker ponders the beauty, or the lack thereof, of his lover. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker presents his lover as an unattractive mistress with displeasing features, but in fact, the speaker is ridiculing, through the use of vivid imagery, the conventions of love poems and the way woman are portrayed through the use of false comparisons. In the end, the speaker argues that his mistress may not be perfect, but in his eyes, her beauty is equal to any woman who is abundantly admired and put through the untrue comparison. The speaker paints a picture of his lovers’ uninspiring beauty. In the first quatrain by describing his, “mistress’ eyes” (Shakespeare 1) as they, “are nothing like the sun” (Shakespeare

They have resemblance themes, which is love is rare and love is lack of judgment. The love relationships in the sonnets are very romantic and only the perspective of love separated them. One choose to see love from a distance, another choose to take a closer look. No matter what approach the poets use or what perspective the poets have, love shares its own nature of being arbitrary and let lovers see what they wanted to see. For the love object, in Astrophil and Stella Sonnet 20, Stella is a goddess that fits in all the conventional beauty and in Sonnet 130; the mistress is an opposite with Stella.

“Beauty in the Eye of a Poet” “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”- Kahlil Gibran. Comparatively between “Sonnet 130”, by William Shakespeare and “The Harlem Dancer”, by Claude McKay, they are English sonnets with fourteen lines or stanzas, and the rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. Both sonnets use metaphors, imagery, and sense of tone to describe female beauty. The speaker’s admires female beauty, yet in different viewpoints. Shakespeare uses nature to compare his lover, being that she isn’t the ideal significant other.

“My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” by William Shakespeare, is a sonnet with an interesting twist on love. He writes, “My Mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun/ Coral is far more red than her lip’s red” (2-3). He finishes the poems with these two lines, “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare” (13-14). Shakespeare is implying that his lover does not fit the hyperboles’ that other poets of his time wrote about, when they spoke of their lovers. When you are truly in love looks aren’t important, because your heart doesn’t judge by appearance.

Renaissance readers would understand the way Shakespeare was describing this woman and why he was. He wasn’t they only who saw these women in such ways. Shakespeare is parodying the already hackneyed views of “beauty” as defined by society and the outlandish metaphors use to describe the beauty of the person, Shakespeare “ sonnet 130” is basically saying “look , my love is not perfect and her lips aren’t as red as roses and her eyes are not as blue as sapphires, but she is beautiful to me simply because I love her”(Educator Emeritus 2007). He is slightly making fun of all the poem who use those incredibly unrealistic comparisons to declare the depth if their love. He truly has a sense of humor, and this is still so true today.

This sonnet is an anti-love poem that ironically shows how the fairness of a lady is contingent upon nature's blessings and her external manifestations. The Spenserian style brings unity to this sonnet, in that it's theme and rhyme is interwoven throughout, but the focus of her "fairness" is divided into an octave and a sestet. The first eight lines praise her physical features (hair, cheeks, smile), while the last six lines praise her internal features (words, spirit, heart). This sonnet intentionally hides the speaker's ridicule behind counterfeit love-language, using phrases like: "fair golden hairs" (line 1), and "rose in her red cheeks" (line 3), and "her eyes the fire of love does spark" (line 4). This traditional love language fills pages of literature and song, and has conventionally been used to praise the attributes of a lover; but this sonnet betrays such language by exhibiting a critique rather than commendation.

We talked about writers such as Sidney, Marlowe, and Raleigh who all wrote about love and had their different opinions about it. For example, Marlowe wrote about wanting to get a woman to love and him and be with him forever. He wrote in a style that would try to woo the girl into wanting because of his profligate wording of her physical beauty. Shakespeare did not want anything to do with that. Shakespeare felt that a woman’s true qualities were derived from her character and what she had to offer other than her physical beauty.