Sonnet 130 William Shakespear

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Nathan Whitehead                Miss Ford

Sonnet 130

By William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's sonnets comprise 154 poems in sonnet form that were published in 1609 but likely written over the course of several years. The years that William Shakespeare was writing poems were the ‘Golden Age’ of British literature. Poetry was mostly in sonnet form with some metaphysical poems as well. This period can be split into four sub-sets: The Elizabethan Age, The Jacobean Age, The Caroline Age and the commonwealth period.

During the Jacobean period (1603-1649) this was the period that Shakespeare sonnets were published.

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme. The two main types of sonnet are the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean.

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I feel in this poem Shakespeare is trying to challenge convention on sonnet poems. Common sonnet poems will talk about love or their lover and will give many false comparisons of their beauty. In this sonnet Shakespeare talks about his lover but not in a false comparison. For the first twelve lines Shakespeare compares his lover but in a negative way.

‘My mistres eyes are nothing like the sunne,

Curral is farre more red, than her lips red,’

This is the first two lines of the poem, as you can see he doesn’t give much positive imagery ...

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