Considering ShakespeareS Sonnet 127 And 130 In Detail, Discuss ShakespeareS Idolisation Of Lovers.

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Towards the end of Shakespeare’s sonnets, his preoccupation seems to be less with the fair, young blonde and is steered in another direction, towards that of a more mysterious dark lady. Where sonnet’s in the fair youth section seem to be more straightforward, focussing on beauty and its preservation against time. The dark lady section however is far more thoughtful and takes a totally different angle on love, in some poems dubbing it a maddening disease. In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare, instead of exaggerating his beloved’s physical features by comparing them to the sun, coral, snow, roses, perfumes, goddesses, declares that he can proclaim his love for her despite the fact that she is not a model of beauty with inhumanly perfect features. In the first quatrain, instead of exaggerating the beauty of his lady’s eyes by claiming that they outshine the sun, this down-to-earth speaker asserts that those eyes are “nothing like the sun.” He fails to describe the eyes at all, but as he continues through other body parts, he becomes more expressive. Her lips are not as red as coral, though they are red, just not as red as coral. Her breasts are not as white as snow; they are actually a dun shade of brown, as all humans beings are various shades of brown. And her hair instead of silky strands look more like “black wires” sticking out of her head. It must be noted here that Shakespeare's reference to hair as 'wires' confuses modern readers because we assume it to mean our current definition of wire, i.e., a thread of metal, which is hardly a fitting word in the context of the poem. However, the in Old English Dictionary, wire would refer to the finely-spun gold threads woven into fancy hair nets. Many poets of the time used this term as a benchmark of beauty. In the second quatrain, the speaker lets us know that he has experience the beauty of a variegated rose, but he
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