Shakespeare Vs. Petrarch William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" and Francis Petrarch's "She Used To Let Her Golden Hair Fly Free" both deal with the issue of ideal and unconditional love. However, they go about explaining this love in exceedingly different manners. Petrarch often depicts his lover as beautiful and angelic. On the contrary, in "Sonnet 130", Shakespeare describes his loved one by describing her human-like characteristics, implying that she is not angelic, but mundane, and the poem has …showed first 75 words of 647 total…

…showed last 75 words of 647 total…time, it is her inner beauty that entices his love for her. Opposite this stylistic technique is Shakespeare, who starts his sonnet by delineating his beloved mistress who is satirically unbecoming. It is for this reason that this particular sonnet has been labeled "anti-Petrarchan". Yet at the end of the sonnet Shakespeare pronounces his undying love for her, because he was able to look beyond the skin, and see the true beauty of her spirit.