Body Paragraph - Chapter 10 - "My mistress' eyes" by William Shakespeare

In the sonnet "My mistress' eyes" by William Shakespeare, the tone of the speaker is playfully faulting for the first twelve lines and then changes to be truthfully honest and loving during the rhyming couplet. This shift in tone fits with the form of a sonnet for the first twelve lines are the perceived problem while the rhyming couplet at the end is a kind of solution to the problem presented. For the first twelve lines, the speaker tells of how his mistress does not posses hyperbolic qualities that are spoken about in many cliched love poems. He tells of how her "eyes are nothing like the sun" and how "coral is far more red than her lip's red" (1-2). This explains the "problem" that she is not like these cliches, but the truth is that no women are like this, for the standards of beauty set by love poems of the day are simply hyperbole. The comparisons of the speaker's mistress' beauty may seem as if they could be hurtful and faulting, yet they are really poking fun at the cliches and telling his mistress that she is not faulted at all to him. He admits that he does not view her as if she were a goddess, but as a human woman: "I grant I never saw a goddess go,- / My mistress when she walks treads on the ground" (11-12). This points to how he expects her to not be all of the exaggerated ideas that she was presented in contrast with. The couplet also points to this idea of truthful, honest love: "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare" (13-14). The speaker tells that he only says what he says in the poem because he does not want to lie to the one he loves and wants to always be truthful with her.