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Essay / Shakespeare Sonnet - 636
A sonnet is a 14-line poem usually written in iambic pentameter. They often adopt the rhyme scheme of English or Italian forms. “My Mistress's Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” by William Shakespeare dates from 1609 and is an English sonnet. This Shakespearean sonnet expresses that women do not need to look like flowers or the sun to be beautiful, because true love does not need a perfect setting or people since we are humans and the imperfection is nothing to be ashamed of; true love comes from the heart. “My Mistress's Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” is a traditional English poem, also known as a Shakespearean Sonnet. The rhyme scheme of this poem is as follows: a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,e,f,e,f,g,g, containing 3 quatrains and a couplet. A quatrain is a 4-line stanza (a poetic paragraph) and a couplet is a 2-line rhyme. This sonnet compares a woman to a number of other beauties, but it seems that not everything about her is good enough for the writer. These comparisons can be seen throughout the poem: in the first line, when it is said that his eyes "have nothing to do with the sun" (Shakespeare 1126), meaning that his eyes could be prettier. On the second line with: her lips are less red than coral, saying that her lips are pale. Additionally, her breasts are brown in color, again compared to white snow, and at the end of the first quatrain it is written: "If hair be threads, black threads grow on her head" (1126) , it is an explicit saying. that his hair is like black threads on his head. In the second quatrain, the speaker maintains his romanticism by saying that he has seen roses separated by color in red and white, but that he sees no roses on his mistress's cheeks; and also the breath that "stinks" (1126) from his mistress is less desirable...... middle of paper ......if I haven't finished reading the poem, then she would have filed for divorce because only at the end can we fully understand this poem and what the speaker is trying to say by making all these comparisons. Throughout the poem the speaker seems to see the glass half empty instead of half full because he likes some of his wife's qualities, but then he turns it around as if her breath isn't as nice as the scent or the way she talks. The rhetorical structure of Shakespeare's "My Mistress's Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" is important because it creates the effect of an expanding and developing argument, and prevents the poem from stagnating by relying on amusing comparisons of the speaker's mistress with several objects and things for its first twelve lines, allowing the sonnet to remain flowing while still stating a clear theme.