east are dun” into line 4 “black wires” (lines 1-4) to more darker shades that perhaps represent the Dark Lady. Quatrain 2 changes the perspective as the narrator speaks in 1st person. The damasked roses belong to the semantic field of love and are typical Petrarchan imagery as well as the negative comparison of her breath to the delight of perfume. Alliteration is also dominant in line 7 with words like than, the, that, (and enjambed into line 8) there. Quatrain 3 beginning with the Volta, has a subtle shift of tone and perception, since it begins with “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know”, however turns again in line 10 as the narrator states that “music hath a far more pleasing sound”, perhaps stating that he likes the content of her utterances rather than the sound of her voice itself (line 9-10). Line 11 and 12 employ again a Petrarchan image of a divine being of with alliterations on grant, goddess and go that his “mistress, when she walks treads on the ground”, empowering a more realistic description that she is a down-to-earth person, rather than an angelic being (line 11-12). These two lines refer directly to the 3rd sonnet by Petrarch himself, where he states that “Her walk was not that of mortal thing but of some angelic form” (Petrarca 192 line 7-8). Shakespeare actually goes right at Petrarch himself and since the structure Shakespearean sonnet is “argued to be haunted by the Petrarchan sonnet” (Holton 380), Shakespeare takes a new approach to this ‘archaic’ poem form. The rhyming couplet follows by concluding the story and revealing the admiration for his mistress despite all his flaws in the preceding 12 lines. For me, line 13 is the more apparent turn than the Volta and in my humble opinion is like a vow of his love his mistress by stating that “by heaven” his love is as dear to him “as any she belied with false compare” (Sonnet 130 line 13-14). The ‘she’ in line 14 is widely debated in academic publications I came across in my research, while Booth glosses ‘she’ as synonymous the noun ‘woman’ (Shakespeare, Booth 455), Steele contests that assumption (Steele 133), which would change the perception of his mistress. However, this is not to be discussed any further in this paper.

After pointing out the differences of Elizabethan and Italian sonnets, arguing that there are various possibilities to write a sonnet without breaking the standard English sonnet and comparing the sonnet to the typical Blazon I must come to the conclusion that sonnet 130 by Shakespeare does not oppose the sonnet