Comparing To his Coy Mistress and Sonnet 130

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GCSE English Coursework        Love Poems Chimwemwe Ngoma

Compare and Contrast Two Love Poems:

‘To His Coy Mistress’ Andrew Marvell and ‘Sonnet 130’ William Shakespeare

Sonnet 130 is a love poem in sonnet form by William Shakespeare that controversially goes against the standard love clichés of a traditional love poem by describing his love honestly and very realistically.

The tone of the poem appears negative but in fact he is actually showing his realisation that love has imperfections but his love is enough to overcome any of them and the beauty of love is a fake sugar-coating of physical beauty. His love is expressed as the love that what lies beneath; the innermost feelings of each person.

The poem (though controversial in its context) is traditionally structured in sonnet form with fourteen lines and ten syllables per line. The ABAB rhyming structure is carried out throughout the poem until the last two lines which are rhyming couplets. This typical structure, along with the obvious iambic pentameter, creates an easy-flowing read with a pleasant rhythm.

At first glance, the context appears to be very insulting and even the very title – ‘my mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun’ – imply an offence. Unlike the majority of the love poems of the period where the poets’ lovers were all described as goddesses that glide and having beautiful golden hair, Shakespeare describes his love as having ‘black wires grow on her head’ and specifically mentions that ‘he never saw a goddess go’ and ‘when she walks, treads on the ground’. This is quite a comparison to the dazzling goddess that one would expect to be described and seems as if Shakespeare is trying to offend his mistress. However, with a little thought, Shakespeare actually appears to be aiming to be realistic about his love - though it may also be proven to simply be a mockery of the conservative love songs of the day.

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While traditional poets would use specific imagery to paint beautiful and attractive images of their love, Shakespeare takes these ideas and revises them, so that they portray unattractive, unpleasant but more honest depictions of his mistress. For example, where poets would describe their loves as having lips as red as coral, Shakespeare describes his mistress’s lips as ‘coral [being] far more red than her lips red’. In addition, instead of describing her rosy cheeks as commonly read elsewhere, he says ‘no such roses have I seen in her cheeks.

The last two lines are different from the rest of ...

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