• Submitted By: laurenmck
  • Date Submitted: 09/22/2015 12:20 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 650
  • Page: 3

﻿Comparison Essay
Sonnet 130 and Sonnet 18

Sonnet 18 is a more traditional sonnet complimenting the person it is talking about, whereas sonnet 130 is insulting the women and saying that she is not beautiful but then in the end he still loves her. The two Sonnets’ are both Shakespearean Sonnets written in iambic pentameter rhythm.

The first quatrain of sonnet 130 talks about his mistress and how she is not pretty and insulting her using figurative language. In the first line he says ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’ this simile which is used to say that her eyes are not bright they are dull. He then goes on to use a metaphor ‘If hairs be wires, black wires grow on your head.’ This is not a very nice use of language because he is saying that her hair does not flow it is more like straw. In the first quatrain of Sonnet 18 it is very different because it is describing her in a nice way, for example in the second line he says ‘though art more lovely and more temperate:’ so he is saying that she is more beautiful than a summer’s day.

In the second quatrain of sonnet 130 it is still insulting his mistress and uses a metaphor to say that she has no colour in her cheeks ‘But no such roses see I in her cheeks;’ This is very insulting and also saying that she has a very pale complexion. I this quatrain he also says ‘Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.’ This is saying that she has really bad breath which makes the reader think why would you say that to a woman if you like her. In the second quatrain of sonnet 18 he says ‘Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines’ which is personification saying that the sun can be too hot. He then goes on to say that everything loses its beauty which is sort of saying that women will eventually lose their beauty too ‘And faire from faire some-time declines,’. In both quatrains there is use of caesura’s which slows the sonnet down a little bit.

In the last quatrain of sonnet 130 he is starting to...

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