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This essay aims to analyze Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 ‘My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun’ from the perspective of syntactic analysis.
Syntax deals with the structure of a sentence or the arrangement of words in a sentence. It’s common for poets to play with word order in order to emphasize specific phrases or sentences. Shakespeare, for example, plays with syntax in the 130th sonnet. ‘Subject Verb Object’ is the standard English sentence word order. But Shakespeare was more than happy to play around with these three fundamental elements—and he did it frequently. SOV inversion appeared frequently in Shakespeare’s work. In the given sonnet, the word order has been rearranged to achieve various creative effects, such as creating rhythm or melody in the lines, emphasizing certain words, enhancing the relationship between two words, and so on. Shakespeare distinguishes his poetry from prose by the employment of a unique syntax. Let us consider the following syntactic examples:
In the following two successive lines, the poet began the sentences with the conjunction If so both sentences have a conditional clause broken by a caesura (William Shakespeare used a comma in the middle of the following lines which is called in poetry a caesura. Caesura is used a lot because Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 begins with a quatrain that is filled with antithesis and makes good use of caesuras).
If snow is white, why then her breasts are dun; (3)
If hairs are wires, black wires grow on her head. (4)
Sonnet sentences:
The sonnet’s sentences are all declarative sentence types. The first 4 lines make up one complex sentence:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far redder than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs are wires, black wires grow on her head.
After this comparison expands across 2 sentences so the speaker can expand his argument and change the flow of the sonnet so it’s not stagnant.
Some sentences exhibit an interrogative tone as in lines 3 and 4:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs are wires, black wires grow on her head.
This tone gives a controversial narrative.
The sentences follow typical SVO order but there is an inversion in line 6 that contains verb subject inversion because in early modern English if the initial clause contained negation the verb could come before the subject:
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
We know that sentence is a group of words and those words are divided into different parts according to their function which is called part of speech. Noun stands for the names of people, places, animals, and things. in sonnet 130 nouns are Mistress, Eyes, Sun, Coral, Lips, Snow, Breasts, Hairs, Wires, Head, Roses, Cheeks, Perfumes, Delight, Breath, Know, Music, Sound, Goddess, Ground, Heaven, and compare.
Words used instead of nouns to avoid tiresome repetition are called Pronouns. Some of the pronouns in sonnet 130 are My, nothing, her, I, and she. Verbs are used for saying something about persons or things. The verb is concerned with doing or beings: Verbs in the given sonnet are, is, be, grow, have seen, damask, see, reeks, love, hear, speak, hath, grant, saw, go, walks, treads, think, and belied.
An Adjective is a word that qualifies or tells more about a noun or pronoun. While Adverbs describe words that modify the meaning of a verb, adjectives, and other adverbs. Adjectives in the sonnet are Red, White, Dun, Black, Far, Pleasing, Rare, and false. Adverbs are: Far, More, Why, Then, There, Yet, Well, Never, When, and as.
Conjunctions are joining words. They join words or sentences. Conjunctions in the sonnet are Than, If, And, and but. Articles are demonstrative Adjectives a, an, they are called Articles. They are often treated as a separate part of speech or class of words. However, some grammarians consider it the ninth part of speech. “The” and “a” are the two articles in Shakespeare’s sonnet 130.
In English grammar, a determiner is a word or a group of words that specifies, identifies, or quantifies the noun or a noun phrase that follows it. It is also known as a prenominal modifier. Determiners in the sonnet are: No, Such, Some, That, and any.
This study shows the syntactic analysis of sonnet 130. Sonnet 130 is a love poem that shows the love of the poet towards his beloved but is described in a different way. The poet says that his lady is not so beautiful but for him, she is the most beautiful lady ever born on earth. In this work of analysis, different aspects of sonnet 130 are elaborated.
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