Defending and Defying the Petrarchan Convention:

Shakespeare's Sonnets 18 & 130

During the Renaissance, it was common for poets to employ Petrarchan conceit to praise their lovers. Applying this type of metaphor, an author makes elaborate comparisons of his beloved to one or more very dissimilar things. Such hyperbole was often used to idolize a mistress while lamenting her cruelty. Shakespeare, in Sonnet 18, conforms somewhat to this custom of love poetry, but later breaks out of the mold entirely, writing his clearly anti-Petrarchan work, Sonnet 130.

In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare employs a Petrarchan conceit to immortalize his beloved. He initiates the extended metaphor in the first line of the sonnet by posing the rhetorical question, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The first two quatrains of the poem are composed of his criticism of summer. Compared to summer, his lover is "more lovely and more temperate" (2). He argues that the wind impairs the beauty of summer, and summer is too brief (3-4). The splendor of summer is affected by the intensity of the sunlight, and, as the seasons change, summer becomes less beautiful (5-8).

Due to all of these shortcomings of summer, Shakespeare contends in the third quatrain of this sonnet that comparing his lover to this season fails to do her justice. While "often is gold [summer's] complexion dimmed," her "eternal summer shall not fade" (6, 9). She, unlike summer, will never deteriorate. He further asserts that his beloved will neither become less beautiful, nor even die, because she is immortalized through his poetry. The sonnet is concluded with the couplet, "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long live this, and this gives life to thee" (13-14). These last two lines further clarify the theme, vowing that for all eternity his lover will be immortalized by his poetry.

Although Shakespeare appears to be conforming, he still elevates his work above the exhausted conventions of other Elizabethan sonneteers. Instead of objectifying his lover through trite comparisons, he declares that she is too beautiful and pleasant to be compared even to a day of the most enjoyable season of the year. While most consider the realm of nature to be eternal and that of humans to be transitory, Shakespeare accentuates the death of a season and imbues his sweetheart with everlasting life. He ingeniously inverts the scheme of things in order to grant his love perpetual existence through his poetry.

Unlike Sonnet 18, Shakespeare utterly abandons the poetic convention of Petrarchan conceit in Sonnet 130. In this poem, Shakespeare denies his mistress all of the praises Renaissance poets customarily attributed to their lovers. The first quatrain is filled exclusively with the Shakespeare's seeming insults of his mistress. While Sir Thomas Wyatt authors a poem entitled "Avising the Bright Beams of These Fair Eyes," in the first line of Sonnet 130, Shakespeare affirms that his "mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." John Wootton, in a poem published in England's Helicon, boasts that his love has "lips like scarlet of the finest dye," but in Sonnet 130 , Shakespeare is sure that his beloved's lips are not nearly quite as red as coral (11; 2). Michael Drayton, in his poem, To His Coy Love, begs his lover, "Show me no more those snowy breasts," but Shakespeare asserts that, compared to snow, his lover's breasts are but the color of dun (9; 3). While Ben Johnson in Her Triumph exclaims, "Do but look on her hair it is bright / As Love's star when it riseth!" Shakespeare assures the reader that his mistress's hair is really nothing special (13-14; 4). Spenser boasts of his love and "the rose in her red cheeks" in "Amoretti 18," but Shakespeare professes that all of the roses he has seen are much more beautiful than the color of his love's cheeks (11; 5-6).

Unlike in Sirena (118), where Michael Drayton says of his mistress, "When she speaketh, / such most delightful balm / from her lips breaketh," Shakespeare is confident that his lover's breath is not as sweet as perfume (and actually, it reeks) (10-12; 7-8). However, the tone of the poem changes in line nine of the second quatrain, where Shakespeare qualifies his next 'insult,' stating that he loves to hear his mistress speak. In the twelfth stanza of Astrophil and Stella, Philip Sidney asserts that his love's "clear voice lifts thy fame to the skies," although Shakespeare is certain that his mistress's voice is not as delightful as music, and that she does not glide gracefully as a goddess-she walks on the ground like the rest of us (8; 9-11). The change in tone, though followed by more 'insults,' begins to indicate the purpose of the speaker's presumably derogatory candor. Shakespeare, tired of clichéd praise, wishes to compliment the value of genuine beauty.

This theme of sincerity is furthered by the concluding couplet, "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare" (13-14). Although he does not endow his love with unattainable beauty conferred to lovers by his predecessors and contemporaries, he finds her quite exceptional. As Shakespeare's mistress is remarkable despite his honesty, his sonnet is remarkable because of it, not only ignoring the artifice of Petrarchan conceit, but also mocking its "false compare" (15).

While it is clear that Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and his Sonnet 130 are very different, the similarity between the two is quite surprising. Through both sonnets, Shakespeare transcends the Petrarchan convention, but in differing degrees. Sonnet 18, while employing a Petrarchan conceit, hints at the inadequacy of such a comparison. By stating that his mistress is "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day, Shakespeare not only commends his beloved but, although he inverts the typical paradigm, insinuates that the human realm and nature cannot truly be compared (Sonnet 18, 2). Shakespeare capitalizes upon these insinuations in Sonnet 130. In this sonnet, he ridicules the most common comparisons of the human realm and nature-the poet's metaphors between woman and nature's objects of beauty. By accentuating the shortcomings of the banal hyperbole of the Elizabethan poet, in both Sonnet 18 and in Sonnet 130, Shakespeare suggests both the futility and the foolishness of attempting to compare humans and nature.

Works Cited

Drayton, Michael. "118. Sirena." The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900. A. T. Quiller-Couch, ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1919, [c1901]. Online. New Bartleby Library. 6 Apr. 1999. Available HTTP: www.bartleby.com.

---. "To His Coy Love." Online. Poet's Corner. 6 Apr. 1999. Available HTTP: www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems.

Jonson, Benjamin, "A Celebration Of Charis: IV. Her Triumph." The Workes Of Benjamin Jonson, London: R. Bishop, Sold By A. Crooke, 1640. Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto). Online. U of Toronto Lib. Internet. 6 April 1999. Available HTTP: library.utoronto.ca.

Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 18." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1. M. H. Abrams, ed. W. W. Norton (New York): 1993.

---. "Sonnet 130." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1. M. H. Abrams, ed. W. W. Norton (New York): 1993.

Sidney, Philip. "Astrophel and Stella." Online. Renascence Editions. U of Oregon P. 6 Apr. 1999. Available HTTP: darkwing.uoregon.edu.

Spenser, Edmund. "Amoretti 18." Online. Sonnet Central. Available HTTP: www.sonnets.org.

Wootton, John. Untitled. Online. Sonnet Central. Available HTTP: www.sonnets.org.

Wyatt, Sir Thomas. "Avising The Bright Beams of These Fair Eyes." British Library Egerton MS. 2711, fol. 22, ed. Richard Harrier. Canon, 1975: 125-26. Online. U of Toronto Lib. Internet. 6 April 1998. Available HTTP: library.utoronto.ca.