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Sonnet Analysis for Students

This sonnet employs irony to describe the poet's mistress. While seemingly criticizing her lack of conventional beauty, comparing her eyes to the un-sunlike and her breasts to an un-snowlike dun color, the poet reveals in the final couplet that his love for her is as rare as any other. The sudden turn at the end of the sonnet changes the tone from critiquing his mistress' imperfect beauty to praising the authenticity and uniqueness of his love for her.

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Conner Chen
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165 views2 pages

Sonnet Analysis for Students

This sonnet employs irony to describe the poet's mistress. While seemingly criticizing her lack of conventional beauty, comparing her eyes to the un-sunlike and her breasts to an un-snowlike dun color, the poet reveals in the final couplet that his love for her is as rare as any other. The sudden turn at the end of the sonnet changes the tone from critiquing his mistress' imperfect beauty to praising the authenticity and uniqueness of his love for her.

Uploaded by

Conner Chen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Sonnet CXXX (13)

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 damasked, 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.

Process:
1. Read the poem silently to yourself.
2. Hear the poem. Listen to the file in the today’s folder to hear Daniel Radcliffe recite the
poem.
3. Define any words you do not know in the space below. The average student should find
about five. Add more spaces as needed.
Word Definition
Dun A dull grayish-brown color; dark, dusky
Damasked Sweet-scented, soft, and velvety
Belie Fail to impress or fulfill

4. Read the poem to yourself and then answer the questions below.
Questions: Write your answer in the spaces provided.

1. How do we know that this poem is a sonnet?

The poem is a sonnet because:
• It has a total of 14 lines
• It follows the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, which is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
-It has three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet

2. What does Shakespeares’s mistress look like? Is she pretty or not? What clues do we
get as readers?

Shakespeare’s mistress isn’t necessarily ugly. She just doesn’t have sun-like eyes, red-like-coral
lips, white-as-snow breasts, and scented, colorful cheeks. In addition, she has black wires for
hair, smelly breath, and a non-pleasing voice.


3. How is irony employed in this sonnet? What is unexpected or different from what you
might expect from a sonnet?

In the sonnet, Shakespeare compares the mistress’ eyes with the sun, lips with coral, breasts
with snow, blackness with wire hair… He says something but means the other, which is one way
that Shakespeare employs irony in the sonnet.

4. Where is the volta (the sudden turning point) in this sonnet? How does the tone change
at this point? Why?

The volta is at the ending two lines of the sonnet, the transition into the rhyming couplets. It is
here where Shakespeare transitions from comparing his mistress’ beauty to female beauty and
love.

5. What is the poem’s purpose? Why did Shakespeare write it?



The sonnet’s purpose is to show what it’s like to love a woman, despite her shortcomings.

Now, upload your work to Schoology for a completion grade.

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