Realistic Love vs. Idealized Beauty
Shakespeare takes aim at the exaggerated praise common in love poetry of his time. Instead of calling his mistress a goddess or comparing her to impossible natural wonders, he deliberately states what she is not:
“If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.”
Rather than insulting her, he’s saying:
“I don’t need to lie to prove my love.”
By the end of the sonnet, the twist reveals everything:
“And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare.”
So, the poem’s heart is:
True love doesn’t require flattery — it lives in truth.
