Mistress Eyes

2 Pages 442 Words

My Mistress Eyes



Shakespeare’s sonnets seem to be very personal and are like records of his hopes and fears, as well as his loves and friendships. In My Mistress Eyes, Shakespeare seems to be very critical of this woman’s physical imperfections. What he is trying to do is make people understand that love, is loving everything about this person, the good and the bad as well as the ugly, that there is more to love then just physical beauty and that you can fall in love with someone even if she seems to have nothing good about her.
Normally when a typical poet writes a sonnet about a woman he loves he talks about her physical beauty, like that her outward appearance, things like her cheeks are like roses and pelts and that her skin is like milk or something really boring and mundane like that.
However, this poem lists and describes every body part, even to the point of some smells of the mistress. The speaker expresses the idea that his mistress is not physically beautiful, and she has flaws, but he loves her anyway. This explains the so-called “flaws” with the writer’s love. He speaks of her eyes being nothing like the sun, her lips not as red as coral, her breast an off-white color, her cheeks less red than roses, and her voice not as pleasant as music. I believe that the speaker expresses this idea in order to say that beauty is only skin deep and there is more to a person than meets the eye.
Shakespeare claims that other perfumes, maybe meaning other women doll themselves up and hide the real part of themselves from others, but his mistress doesn’t she is a real plain woman. The writer uses a goddess reference, whom a person who anyone would accept as having perfect physical attributes. His mistress may be a large woman or a cripple who seems to have problems walking. However, despite all these things, he still loves “to hear her speak” and finds his love rare, recognizable by the gods.
Shakespeare...