Sonnet 130 is Shakespeare's harsh but realistic tribute to his quite ordinary mistress. Conventional love poetry of his time employed Petrarchan imagery and entertained notions of courtly love. François Pétrarque, often known for his perfection of the sonnet form, developed a number of techniques to describe the pleasures and torments of love as well as the beauty of the beloved. If Shakespeare adheres to this form, he also undermines it. Through the use of deliberately subversive wordplay and exaggerated similes, ambiguous concepts, and adherence to the sonnet form, Shakespeare creates a parody of the traditional love sonnet. Although ultimately Shakespeare embraces Petrarch's general theme of all-consuming, all-consuming love. Sonnet 130 openly mocks the traditional love sonnets of the time. This is perhaps made more evident by the use of subversive similes and exaggerated comparisons. The intention of a subversive simile is to imitate a traditional simile while highlighting the opposite goal. While his contemporaries compared the beauty of their love to alabaster or pearls, Shakespeare notes: "If snow be white, why then her breasts are brown" (3), thus intentionally downplaying his mistress's beauty. Later, he states: “…in certain perfumes there is more delight / than in the breath that stinks of my mistress’s” (7-8). These two examples illustrate that Shakespeare ridicules the traditional love sonnet by employing the same images to convey opposing intentions. Closely related to subversive similes, Shakespeare also uses exaggerated similes. Unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare presents his Mistress in conventionally negative terms. "My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun/horn...... middle of paper ...... resolution of his argument by implementing a twist in both the ninth line and the couplet final to support his assertion. He makes this known in the verses: “I like to hear him speak, but I know that music has a much more pleasant sound” (9-10) and again in the final verse: “And yet, by heaven , I think my love is as rare / as all that she belied with false comparisons” (13-14) that whatever his faults, he enjoys her company and realizes that she has been distorted by ridiculous comparisons. Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, although it uses Petrarchan imagery and form, also undermines it. Although ultimately Shakespeare embraces Petrarch's overall theme of total, all-consuming love. Works Cited “The Renaissance”. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Ed. Sarah N. Lawall. Eighth edition. Volume 1. New York: WW Norton, 2006. 1894-1918. Print.