My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun

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Good Morning/afternoon Mr Dunshea and class, the poem I have chosen to analyse is My Mistress’ Eyes by William Shakespeare, it is 130 of 154 sonnets and was written in the Elizabethan era 1600-1700, it is unknown the exact date in which each of his sonnets are written but can only be suggested my the context. A sonnet is a form of poetry that originated in Europe consisting of 14 lines, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. The first twelve lines are divided into three quatrains with four lines each. In the three quatrains the poet establishes a theme or problem and then resolves it in the final two lines. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet. The style of sonnet written in the Elizabethan era were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally of the poet's love for some woman; with the exception of Shakespeare's sequence. The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. I will read to aloud to you sonnet 130: 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. The

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