Sonnet 18 and sonnet 130 comparison?

During Shakespeare time he wrote famous plays, several poems and one hundred and fifty four exceptional shorter poems known as sonnets. Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 130 is two of his famous sonnets. They both are similar in theme, revolving around love, and Shakespeare has used several techniques in order to present this theme. The two sonnets arrive at a contradictory where his early sonnet, sonnet 18, supplements the theme with natural beauty and sonnet 130 using inner beauty.

The poet uses the common traditional idea of love in the early sonnet to express the depth of his love that he has for his girlfriend. Shakespeare includes lines complimenting this wife, similar to the first line where he begins using a rhetorical question , should he compare her "to a summers day?" This gives the expression to the reader that she is just as beautiful and glorious as summer but then later this expression is soon lost and failed to describe her. This is seen in the second line he states that she is "more lovely" and "more temperate" and considering she is more temperate tan summer it tells the reader that her beauty for him is consistent. This stylistic technique of comparing her to summer and then to dissent himself by saying that not even summer is as glorious as her. In sonnet 130 he uses a very unconventional way to express love. I think by using this technique it shows that Shakespeare enjoys to express his love by comparing her to summer but then that not even that is an appropriate description.

The tone is different in sonnet 130 where he uses a structure where the quatrains help to expand his description of how his mistress' qualities are all ghastly. For example he speaks about her lips and that coral is more red "than her lips' red" A technique used is by emphasizing that her lips are not red repeating the adjective "red". On top of that he includes the Words "far more" giving the audience the image that if her lips were red they would have to be painted implying to us that she does not posses fake beauty. The structure of the rhyme scheme finishes with a rhyming couplet that concludes beyond all her unsatisfying qualities he believes that his "love as rare". This technique stresses how her beauty is internal. In my opinion this structure shakespeare uses to present love is a very different concept to the traditional way but it was cleverly used and it shows how deep love can be found by a man and that its not all on the outer beauty.