Eastern University

Assignment Spring 2021

ENG 240: Shakespeare 1
Name: Rifah Rafia Islam ID: 193300021 Semester: 6th
B.A (Hons.) in English Literature
Question: Make a comparison between the two sets of sonnets written by William
Shakespeare by referring to at least one sonnet from each group.
Answer: Shakespeare wrote total 154 sonnets and the sonnets mostly covered the themes love,
time, beauty, immortality infidelity and jealousy. The sonnets I’m going to make comparison
about Sonnet 130 and Sonnet 138, both are similar yet different in some ways.
Firstly in Sonnet 130, the speaker talked about their romantic interest’s appearance. In typical
love poems, we could see the speakers would described their lover as the most beautiful person
in the world. But this is not the case in sonnet 130. The speaker started describing all the flaws
she had, like tan skin, dull coloured lips, frizzy black hair, hoarse voice and unpleasant body
smell. She simply didn’t match the British beauty standards of that time. Despite having all the
flaws she didn’t hide or do anything to match the beauty standards. She was true to herself and
the speaker loved her very much no matter how she look like.
Now in Sonnet 138, the romantic interest of the speaker gives false compliment to him. There’s a
big age gap between them I suppose. She often compliments him about how young and
handsome he is while he is not and the speaker is aware of it. The speaker knows that he is
indeed old and his romantic interest is lying to him about that. But he doesn’t decline. He lies to
her by saying her that he agrees with her. He thinks that she is lying to make him happy and
therefore he is also lying so she doesn’t get sad either. The use of false compliments are being
used to make each other happy and the speaker claims that it’s not a bad thing.
In Sonnet 130, the speaker directly talks about her appearance, he doesn’t sugar-coat her with
any lies even though she doesn’t seems to be unpleased because she knows he loves her no
matter what. Where as in sonnet 138, the speaker’s lover gives him false compliments in order to
make him happy so the speaker doesn’t mind and he also lie to make her happy. Instead of
telling the harsh truth to each other, they are lying to each other to please themselves. The
similarity in here is both the couple loves each other no matter what. In conclusion, both the
poems expressed the theme love in different ways.