When we think of the word mood, we associate it with the emotion
produced in a literary text through the choice of words and content. Of course, a mood can change
as a text progresses and so often there may be two or more moods in a given text of literature.
When we think about this excellent sonnet, therefore, it is clear that the mood of the first
fourteen lines is mocking and humorous, as Shakespeare deliberately plays with the conventions of
sonnets and presents his beloved in a less than attractive light with such descriptions as
follows:
And in some
perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my
mistress reeks...
This is hardly what
Shakespeare's readers would have expected from a love sonnet, and so the mocking tone is
established. However, it is in the rhyming couplet that closes the poem where there is a distinct
shift in mood. The last two lines almost have a defiance and seriousness about them that are in
sharp contrast to the rest of the poem:
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And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as
rare
As any she belied with false
compare.
These two lines affirm the
love that the speaker has for his mistress and also underlines his dislike of exaggerated
conceits. Thus there are two tones in this poem: a mocking tone in the first fourteen lines,
which is replaced by a serious tone in the rhyming couplet that ends the
sonnet.
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