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Read Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130.”

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;



Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,—
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
      And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
      As any she belied with false compare.


What is the central idea of the first quatrain?

My mistress is unattractive.My mistress is beautiful.My mistress has a natural beauty. My mistress is not a perfect beauty.

User Yitsushi
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The answer is: My mistress is not a perfect beauty.

Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" is a parody of traditional sonnets at the time, in which poets compared their lovers to beautiful things like diamonds, fine pearls, flowers or goddesses. In the first four lines, Shakespeare expresses his lover does not possess a conventional beauty: her eyes are not like the sun, her lips are not red, her breasts are brownish or yellowish, and her hair looks like wires.

User GPI
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