This sonnet is part of the collection composed by 154 sonnets of Shakespeare.

Just considering the layout, the reader understands it's a sonnet because it's made up of fourteen lines. In particular, it is arranged into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, following the model of the Elizabethan sonnet. The rhyme scheme is : ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. In Fact in the three quatrains the first line rhymes with the third line and the second one with the last one.

Shakespeare's sonnets can be divided into 2 different sections: the sonnets from one to one hundred twenty six are addressed to a young man, the Fairy Youth, while the sonnets from 127 to 154 are addressed to the Dark Lady. This sonnet, number 130 is addressed to the dark lady.

In the first quatrain the speaking voice describes in a negative way his Mistress, he says that: her eyes are not like sun, her lips are not red as coral, her breasts are durk and not white as snow, she hasn’t blond hair,infact her hair are like black wires. 

Shakespeare takes distances from the typical sonnet that is addressed to a perfect woman, an idealized woman, the poet instead addresses his poem to a woman that is not perfect but more realistic.

In the second quatrain the negative connotation continues, the speaking voice says that: the woman doesn’t have rosy cheeks and her breath doesn’t smell so good. 

in the third quatrain there is the turning point: Shakespeare gives the first compliment to his Mistress “I love to hear her speak”, but he knows her voice is not musical and he must admit that he has never seen a goddess on earth, but he can say that his mistress walks on the ground like a woman. 

At the end of the third quatrain and in the rhyming couplet the reader can understand that the woman compared by the speaking voice isn’t like an angel, she isn’t perfect and she hasn’t blond hair and blue eyes, but he loves her as she is. The speaking voice wants to underline that there is no need for false comparisons to describe a woman.