Today I will lighten the tone by discussing Sonnet 130 in which Shakespeare mocks the Petrarchan tradition of overly sugary romantic love and ideal beauty. Contrary to this Elizabethan ethereal high flown poetry of idyllic beauty, here Shakespeare exaggerates a negative imagery to portray the physical and behavioural flaws of his lover.
Instead of criticising his lover’s imperfections, he praises them. He accepts that she isn't an idyllic beauty, but a real woman with all her human imperfections. Her eyes are dull, her lips are are dim, her breasts are dark, her hair is wiry black and her complexion is pale. As for her gait, she is heavy on her feet and to add insult to injury, she has bad breath.
However, whatever she looks or acts like, she still remains his true love. In the final couplet of this unique poem, Shakespeare declares that he believes his woman to be as special as any other of those women who are falsely praised by bombastic Petrarchan idolatry.
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
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