love and what used to be.Discussion
Remember that a poem can be interpreted differently by different readers. To demonstrate this, the interpretation here differs slightly from that in your anthology. The anthology takes the “they” literally, and assumes that there were many women in the speaker’s life. The interpretation here is that the “they” refers to one woman in particular.
The speaker remarks on the fact that a woman used to happily seek him out, and how happy and grateful this made him. She would allow him to master and dominate her, to tame her. This doesn’t happen anymore. Then he remembers one time when she changed. She became the dominant one who tamed him. However, she left him for new adventures. The speaker ends by wondering whether he was too kind to her and that is the reason she left him, and he wonders what happened to her afterwards.
The poem, a lyric, is written in rhyme royal, which means that it uses the rhyme scheme ababbcc. There are seven lines to each of the three stanzas. Each stanza has a separate idea. The first stanza tells us that the speaker has been rejected by his lover, the second stanza what it was like with her and how he enjoyed it, and in the third stanza he speculates as to why she left and wonders what has become of her.
Sir Thomas Wyatt’s (1503–1542) work seem to deal with romantic love and mistresses – he was charged with adultery and having an affair with Anne Boleyn (Queen of England from 1533–1536).
Analysis
| Stanza | Comment | |
| 1 | Line 1 gives the topic of the poem. The woman used to come into his room, barefoot, “stalking” him. She used to be tame with him but later became wild and risked the danger of being found out; but now she has left him to look for something different. | Although the speaker mentions “they”, we can assume that he is referring to one woman. He likens her behaviour to that of a tame animal that would feed from his hand. “Stalking” implies that she is the one who started the relationship.Notice the antonym (word with opposite meaning) for “gentle, tame, and meek” in “wild”, indicating how the woman changed. She seems to have forgotten the risks she took to be with him, coming into his room. This implies that their relationship was secret and probably wrong. (Was she married to someone else?)Notice the run-on line (lines 5 and 6, where there is no pause at the end of line 5), which leads to the break in the middle of line 6 and the short phrase that follows it. This suggests the sudden change in the relationship and the bitterness the speaker feels. |
| 2 | The second stanza refers to the way things used to be. He realises he was lucky (“Thanked by Fortune”) and describes her coming to him lightly dressed and letting her clothes slip off, she would take him in her arms, seemingly wanting to please him (“Dear heart, how like you this?”). | The “twenty times better” shows how unhappy he is about the way things are now, compared with what they were.The description of the woman undressing and kissing him confirms the romantic and sexual nature of the relationship. We understand how the loss of the woman is hurting him. |
| 3 | In thinking about how things used to be with the woman, he asserts that he was not dreaming it, it really happened (“I lay broad waking”). He reasons that it was his own gentleness that caused her to change and leave him, giving him his freedom too. He sees it as “newfangleness” that she wanted, someone different. He bitterly, almost angrily, asks what response he should show to her rejection when he was so kind to her.*“newfangleness” is believed to be Chaucer’s word (Wyatt admired Chaucer’s work). | The speaker seems to be reassuring his reader and himself about how good the relationship was. He tries to explain that it must have been his gentleness that made her end the relationship. He is almost scornful of her in referring to her desire for some new fashion of lover, as the word “newfangleness” seems to imply.His tone changes in the last two lines when he asks how, given that he was so kind to her, he should treat her. Or we can see him being sarcastic (meaning the opposite of what is said) in the use of “kindely”, where he means the opposite: he is asking how he should treat her given how badly she treated him in leaving him. |
Contextual questions
1.What do you understand by “that” in the first line? (2)
2.The speaker says the woman doesn’t remember that she “put (them) in danger” when she came to him. Why do you think he says this? (3)
3.What is the tone of the second stanza? In other words, what do you think the speaker is feeling, or what emotion is he conveying by his words? How does this contrast with the tone of the third stanza? (3)
4.Line 15 is a statement. What do you think causes the speaker to make it? (3)
5.List any four words in the third stanza that show us the poem was written in 1557. (4)
(15)
Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare
(See p. 3 in Poems From All Over)
| Title: | Shakespeare wrote many sonnets. Some of them are known by their number rather than their title. This one is also known by its first line. |
| Theme: | It is not necessary to use clichés (over-used phrases) to describe one’s beloved. Reality is good enough. |
| Mood: | The poem mocks the elaborate clichés of other poets; the tone is mocking, sarcastic. |
Discussion
This poem is fully discussed on p. xvii of your anthology as an example of how to analyse a poem. The sonnet is a love sonnet, but instead of using the traditional hyperbole (exaggeration) in comparing a beloved with what is most beautiful in nature, Shakespeare describes her as not being those things and tells what he actually sees. He loves the woman as much as any of the other poets love theirs, but refuses to use false comparisons in describing her. He is commenting negatively on other love sonnets (the popular Petrarch sonnets of that period). This sonnet is thus a parody (an imitation of a particular style with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect).
A sonnet has fourteen lines. The Shakespearian sonnet is divided into three quatrains (four lines) and a rhyming couplet. The three quatrains describe the beloved in terms of what she is not (e.g. her cheeks are not red like the roses the poet has seen). The couplet rounds off the sonnet by saying that even though he has not described her as others describe their lovers, he loves her in the same way. In other words the exaggerated comparisons are not necessary to describe real love.
Analysis
| Lines | Comment | |
| 1–4 | The woman’s eyes, lips, breasts and hair are described as not like the sun, not as red as coral, not white as snow and not golden thread. | The descriptions are less romantic but are true. The “nothing” stresses the degree to which the eyes cannot be compared to the sun. Note the repetition of the form “If ... ” (then something else), which stresses what he saying and how it is said. |
| 5–8 | The poet mentions what real roses (the York and Lancaster variety) look like and then says her cheeks are not like that. He mentions perfume and says he receives far more delight from real perfume than from her “reek(ing) breath”. | The poet continues mocking the romantic terms usually used – roses for cheeks, perfume for breath – saying that he cannot describe her in these terms, as other poets might describe their lovers, because he knows roses and perfume and she is not like them. |
| 9–12 | The comparisons continue: her voice is not like music, and the way she moves and walks is not like the way a goddess does. | The two elements being compared here are voice and movement. The poet says he does love her voice, but he knows that music sounds better. Some men describe their lovers as moving like goddesses. Here the poet says he has never seen a goddess moving, which is a humorous poke at others’ comparisons, but his mistress walks normally, on the
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