Sonnet 130 is a sonnet by William Shakespeare, published in 1609 as one of his 154 sonnets. It mocks the conventions of the showy and flowery courtly sonnets in its realistic portrayal of his mistress.
Sonnet 130 in the 1609 Quarto
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect.
The first five sonnets of Petrarch's Il Canzoniere
The title page of the first edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets
D. G. Rossetti's illuminated description of the sonnet, 1880
Mary Ellen Solt's concrete "Moonshot sonnet" (1964)