Sonnet 130

The poem’s author and the name assigned to the poem tell the reader a great deal about the form and meter. The poem is a sonnet, and since its author is William Shakespeare, it’s a Shakespearian sonnet: It represents Shakespeare’s version of the sonnet. The poem has three quatrains, or three parts consisting of four lines. The poem also has a concluding couplet that clarifies what the other 12 lines were about. In “Sonnet 130,” Shakespeare uses the last couplet to tell the reader that he hasn’t spent the previous 12 lines demeaning his mistress. Rather, the first 12 lines represent his drive to not expose his mistress to “false compare” (Line 14). The speaker and the mistress have a “rare” (Line 13) love, and the speaker doesn’t want to hide their bond with artificial imagery.

Although “Sonnet 130” features a woman absent of a “pleasing sound” (Line 10), the meter and rhyme scheme is quite pleasing. Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter, so there’s an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, which equals a foot, and each line has five feet or five pairs of unstressed-stressed syllables.