My mistress' eyes

1. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

2. Coral is far more red, than her lips red:

3. If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

4. If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

5. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

6. But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

7. And in some perfumes is there more delight

8. Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

9. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

10. That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

11. I grant I never saw a goddess go,—

12. My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

13. And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,

14. As any she belied with false compare.

The sonnet belongs to the sequence of the Dark Lady.

Shakespeare secretly loved a woman, who is the ‘mistress’ that totally controls him.

In the first lines, there are a lot of slimily, that expresses a negative comparison between mistress’ parts of body and some elements of nature. For example, the voice compares at line 1 his mistress’ eyes to the sun, at line 2 his mistress’ lips are compared to red corals, at line 3 her breasts aren’t as white as the snow, at line 4 her hairs are compared to black wires, at line 5 her cheeks are compared to red and white roses, at line 7 her breath is not perfumed,  at line 9 her voice is less pleasing than music and finally, at line 12, the speaker underlines that his mistress does not walk lightly.  In each line, the speaker makes a comparison in which the natural elements are always better than his mistress.

All the three quatrains are a complete parody of the traditional woman of the Stilnovo. The Dark Lady is a parody of the traditional praised angle-woman.

Shakespeare underlines new parts of the body; the most unusual element introduced is his mistress’ breasts. It is a signal of that distance from the courteous period, because it suggest the awareness of the rinascimental man of the existence of the terrestrial sphere.

The climax of negative qualities ends with the rhyming couplet. It is the solution of the sonnet. 

In the rhyming couplet, the speaker says he thinks that his mistress is ‘as rare as any she belied in false compare’. So the speaker reveals that he loves his mistress for her uniqueness, at the same time he criticizes the false comparison of angle-women. 

The message that the sonnet conveys is that you can fall in love with somebody not for her/his beauty, but for her/his uniqueness.