Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare
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.
Published in the quarto Shake-Speares Sonnets, circa 1609, this quarto focused on themes of love,
mortality, time, and beauty. Within the sonnets, Shakespeare satirized popular renaissance poetry which
included an obsession with the describing a lover who could never realistically live up to the beauty
described in the poem. Some of these authors include Thomas Watson, Michael Drayton, and Barnabe
Barnes.
This sonnet is also an example of Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter which refers to the pattern
of stressed and unstressed syllables. With iambic pentameter, each line is made up of five pairs of
syllables with the stress or emphasis placed on the even syllables.
Iambic pentameter looks like this:
da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM
Consider the following widely used example of iambic pentameter: pronounce the word “trapeze.” When
you pronounce this word, you will naturally emphasize the first syllable, "TRA—peze." In iambic
pentameter you would emphasize the second syllable and say, "tra—PEZE." Because this cadence of
speech flows so naturally with the English language it is both the most widely used and is often difficult to
identify.
Practice questions:
Explain satire.
What is the rhyme scheme of a sonnet?
Write a couplet using iambic pentameter.
Write one sonnet in the topic of your choice.