My Mistress’ Eyes

Looking at the title is interesting to notice that it has the alliterative sound of “m”.

The pattern of Shakespearian sonnets is composed by three quatrains and a couplet.

Reading only the title, the intelligent reader could think that in this sonnet, Shakespeare uses the courtly love poetry to well convey his love for that woman.

In the sonnet Shakespeare uses the courtly love code to turn it upside down. Nothing is so perfect in his woman; her eyes, her lips, her cheeks are not perfect like those that a woman has.

With it, Shakespeare starts an innovative vision, a new vision of the woman that has not to be perfect.

His lady is not the icon of beauty as it had generally been represented by the typical conventions of that time. The stylistic innovation is the use of hyperbole by means which Shakespeare turned the conventions of love poetry.