Sonnet 130 And 130 Analysis

3. Close Reading of Sonnets 18, 130 and 144

As implied in the second part of this paper, beauty in Shakespeare’s sonnets includes different aspects: It contains not only conventional and therefore highly artificial (since constructed) beauty, but also a vibrant attractiveness of a non-perfect person. Sonnets 18 and 130 in such a way juxtapose the black and fair beauties of the poet’s beloveds that the differences between them become clearly discernible.

“Sonnet 18” follows the Petrarchan tradition and praises the classical beauty and the virtues of the poet’s male beloved. In the first line, the sonneteer introduced the aim of the following seven lines: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Already in the second line, he draws a conclusion:

Furthermore, the structure of this sonnet differs completely from that of “Sonnet 18”, where at first a preconclusion about the Youth’s superiority over the summer is presented, followed by a description of a summer’s day. In “Sonnet 130”, separate features of the Lady’s appearance are compared to different items – either in the same very line or in the successive one. At the first glance, “Sonnet 130” is constructed quite traditionally; it follows the structure of a blazon (see Callaghan 52) and even reiterates the most important metaphors (see Callaghan 18) used for praising an appearance of the beloved in the Petrarchan convention. However, from the famous very first line – “My mistress ' eyes are nothing like the sun” – it becomes clear that in content, Shakespeare inverts the Petrarchan blazon; as the result, the Dark Lady looks as different from Laura as possible: By denying all idealized features, the author creates an idiosyncratic portrait of the poet’s inamorata: The Lady is portrayed as an ungracious dark woman with black uneven hair and foul breath (Shakespeare 130: 1–12). That is, Shakespeare declares all the conventional attributes of beauty as non-existent in the image of the Dark Lady, but claims that the poet’s love is still “as rare / as any she belied with false compare” (Shakespeare 130: 14). With this in mind,

That is to say, Shakespeare introduces a male figure who acquires not only all features of classical initially female beauty, but also functions as a poet’s beloved whose love and favour the poet can never reach. Consequently, this love stays throughout the story unconsummated. Additionally, the sequence contains also a lady – the Dark Lady, but her features are far from conventional: She is depicted as an easily attainable black mistress. As fairness is considered the basis for classical beauty of Petrarch’s Laura, the darkness of the Lady challenges the convention by its non-conformity. It is also not surprising that portrayed as an easy sexual target the poet’s mistress instigates the tumult in the love relations by becoming a lover of both main male characters. In such a way, adjusting the convention to the story in the sequence, Shakespeare alters the quality and doubles the number of the love objects and, as a consequence, instead of a simple straightforward love story describes relations in a love