Sonnet 130 is one of the sonnets written by William Shakespeare, the father of English literature. His works and plays are more prominent in the outside world and even in this modern era, we learn many of his works. He is also known as the “Bard of Avon”. He also wrote several long narrative poems and the most famous sonnet sequence in English.
In sonnet 130 the poet gives a realistic description of his beloved in a mocking manner which was conventional in Elizabethan love lyrics. He tries to expose the artificiality of the common images of supreme beauty by confessing that none of the beauty applies to his beloved and towards the end of the poem he affirms that he considers her as beautiful as any woman. The poem is a moving statement about unconditional love on the mysterious and irrational experience of love. This is kind similar to the poem of Maya Angelou’s phenomenal woman, where inner beauty and pride are given importance. Here Shakespeare does the same, till line 12 of the poem he mocks his beloved for her dark shade and not having any qualities of the ideal beauty. Yet he finds her beautiful in the concluding couplet.
That itself is enough to show how he values her more than skin deep he values her inner beauty, that may not be visible still it is the highlighting element that people indirectly focus on