The main literary device employed with Sonnet
130 is that of parody, In this sonnet, Shakespeare flaunts the
blazon, a literary poem that praises the lover by cataloging the virtues and
other sterling characteristics of the beloved. Thus, this anti-Petrarchan comparison
offers a touch of humor to Shakespeare's sonnet sequence as the mistress is far from
being a goddess or ideal.
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her
head
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses
see I in her cheeks....
Here,
too, in this sonnet Shakespeare mocks, or parodies, the conventions of the sonnet
sequence in which there are three separate quatrains, which often are formed around a
separate metaphor with a closing couplet that ties all ideas together. For, in Sonnet
130, the metaphors are in the negative and their crescendo is toward the worse rather
than waxing superlative. For, the mistress's breasts are "dun," her hair like "wire,"
her breath "reeks," her voice is abrasive, and she "treads on the ground" like the
mechanicals of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Finally, rather than
tying the ideas together in the couplet, the poet offers a contradiction with his
simile,
And
yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false
compare.
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