SONNET 130
PARAPHRASE
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
My mistress's eyes are not at all like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
Coral is much more red than her lips;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If snow is white, then her breasts are certainly not white as
snow;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
If hairs can be compared to wires, hers are black and not
golden.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
I have seen roses colored a combination of red and white
(thus pink),
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
But I do not see such colors in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
And some perfumes give more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
Than the breath of my mistress.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
I love to hear her speak, but I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
That music has a more pleasing sound than her voice;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
I also never saw a goddess walk;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
But I know that my mistress walks only on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
And yet I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
As any woman who has had poetic untruths told about her
beauty with false comparisons.
Sonnet 130 is clearly a parody of the conventional and traditional love sonnet, made popular by Petrarch.
If you compare any of the stanzas of that poem with Shakespeare's sonnet 130, you will see exactly what elements of
the conventional love sonnet Shakespeare is light-heartedly mocking. In sonnet 130, there is no use of grandiose
metaphor or allusion -- he does not compare his love to Venus; there is no evocation to Morpheus, etc. The ordinary
beauty and humanity of his lover are what is important to Shakespeare in this sonnet, and he deliberately uses typical
love poetry metaphors against themselves. In Sidney's work, for example, the features of the poet's lover are as
beautiful and, at times, more beautiful than the finest pearls, diamonds, rubies, and silk. In sonnet 130, the references
to such objects of perfection are indeed present, but they are there to illustrate that his lover is not as beautiful -- a
total rejection of Petrarch form and content. Shakespeare utilizes a new structure, through which the straightforward
theme of his lover’s simplicity can be developed in the three quatrains and neatly concluded in the final couplet.
Thus, Shakespeare is using all the techniques available, including the sonnet structure itself, to enhance his parody of
the traditional Petrarchan sonnet typified by Sidney’s work. But Shakespeare ends the sonnet by proclaiming his love
for his mistress despite her lack of adornment, so he does finally embrace the fundamental theme in Petrarch's
sonnets -- total and consuming love.
One final note: Shakespeare's reference to hair as 'wires' confuses modern readers because we assume it to mean our
current definition of wire -- a thread of metal -- which is hardly a fitting word in the context of the poem. However,
to a Renaissance reader, wire would refer to the finely-spun gold threads woven into fancy hair nets. Many poets of
the time used this term as a benchmark of beauty, including Spenser: "Her long loose yellow locks like golden wire"
(Epithal).
Mabillard, Amanda. An Analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. Shakespeare Online. 2000. 10/1/05
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/130detail.html >.
It's All About The Pentiums by Al Yankovic
(parody of "It's All About The Benjamins" by Puff Daddy
Now... what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be ballers? Shot-callers?
Brawlers -- who be dippin in the Benz wit the spoilers
On the low from the Jake in the Taurus
Tryin to get my hands on some Grants like Horace…)
Lyrics: It's all about the Pentiums, baby
Uhh, uh-huh, yeah
Uhh, uh-huh, yeah
It's all about the Pentiums, baby
It's all about the Pentiums, baby
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
Yeah
What y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?
Workin' at a desk with a dumb little placard?
Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skills
Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills
I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM
I never feed trolls and I don't read spam
Installed a T1 line in my house
Always at my PC, double-clickin' on my mizouse
Upgrade my system at least twice a day
I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K
I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him "Money" for short
I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
It's all about the Pentiums, what?
You've gotta be the dumbest newbie I've ever seen
You've got white-out all over your screen
You think your Commodore 64 is really neato
What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?
You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet
Your database is a disaster
You're waxin' your modem, tryin' to make it go faster
Hey fella, I bet you're still livin' in your parents' cellar
Downloadin' pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar
And postin' "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er
I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller
You're just about as useless as jpegs to Hellen Keller
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
Now, what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?
Uh, uh, loggin' in now
Wanna run wit my crew, hah?
Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
They call me the king of the spreadsheets
Got 'em printed out on my bedsheets
My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique
Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great
If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight
My digital media is write-protected
Every file inspected, no viruses detected
I beta tested every operating system
Gave props to some, and others? I dissed 'em
While your computer's crashin', mine's multitaskin'
It does all my work without me even askin'
Got a flat-screen monitor forty inches wide wide
I believe that your says "Etch-A-Sketch" on the side
In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user
You've got your own newsgroup, "alt.total-loser"
Your motherboard melts when you try to send a fax
Where'd you get your CPU, in a box of Cracker Jacks?
Play me online? Well, you know that I'll beat you
If I ever meet you I'll control-alt-delete you
What? What? What? What? What?
Your assignment: Write a parody.
Choose a well-known poem or song to
parody. Remember, the better-known the
inspiration, the bigger your audience for
your parody will be. You may choose any
topic. When you type this up, include
original words, then your own. Extra
points to those who present their
parodies! Otherwise, just slip them into
your LRN.