Sonetto CXXX

Sonetto CXXX

The term sonnet derives from the Italian sonetto, a little sound or song. The first example we have are by Giacomo da Lentini but the sonnet established its importance as a poetic form with Petrarch's Canzoniere.

Shakespeare was married, but he wrote many sonnets to another lady whose we don't know anything, and for this reason she is called the mysterious "Dark Lady". The poems reject many of the traditional conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, for example the ideal perfection and beauty of the beloved. In fact in the sonnet he presents the lady exactly as she is in reality: she have't eyes like the sun, she have't red lips, her speak isn't like music, she doesn't walk like a goddess.

So we can note that Shakespeare give us a realistic description of the woman.

The sonnet says:

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 . .

it describes in first three quatrains all the negative aspects of the lady, but differently of the Italian  sonnet he describes the truth.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false e.

But at the and of the sonnet he declares that he loves his lady for all these defects which only he can appreciate.