SONNET 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks; 
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare. 

The sonnet was written by Shakespeare and it belongs to the sequence addresses to “the dark lady”.

It is a Shakespearean sonnet, in fact it is composed by 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet.

The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EE

Right from the start the reader understand that the sonnet is about a woman that is referred to with the word “mistress” (line 1). Mistress were kind of women who had physical relationship with men and they were subjugated by the women. In fact, the possessive adjective “my” reinforces the idea of physical possession that characterizes a man-mistress relationship.

The first two  stanzas have the function to describe the dark lady. In the first and in the second quatrains the speaking voice underlines the woman’s negative qualities compared with the courteous love ones. The first quatrain has the function to clarify the content of the sonnet itself by describing the woman’s face. The word “eyes” seems to make the sonnet coherent with the courteous love code because in courteous love tradition the description of the woman in an idealized way was always a key element. The poem shows many elements connected to courteous love: the black of the woman’s hair, the red lips (l. 2), the with colour of her complexion (l. 3). However, all these elements are in sharp contrast with the dark lady’s real being. She isn’t beautiful at all. She is ugly indeed: her eyes aren’t beautiful, her lips aren’t red, her breasts aren’t white but dun, her hair are black, her voice isn’t melodious as music, she doesn’t smell good and she doesn’t walk like  a Goddess but she treads on the ground. So, Shakespeare employs particular figures of speech to stress the contrast between the real and the ideal. These are: antithesis, climax (from the light of the Sun to the black of the hairs-wires), comparisons (are nothing, far more).

Strangely enough it is quotes her breasts, a part of the body which was alien to the courteous love, to say that they are not white.

Shakespeare also works with colours. Red (line 2), white (line 3) and black (line 4 )are recurrent hues to turn upside down the image of the idealized woman. 

The second quatrain’s function is to analyze in a deeper way the speaking voice/dark lady relationship. The lyrical I compares the woman with roses and perfumes.

The third stanza continues by focusing on the woman’s voice and on the way she walks. Shakespeare adopts the same technique of the previous two quatrains in fact he shows her voice that is not like music, and her way of walking that is not like the one of a  goddess.

In the first line of the third quatrain there are two verbs of perception: “hear” and “know”.  The courteous love was based on verbs of perception, because the descriptive aspect had a more significant value than actions. 

The rhyming couplet represents the turning point of the whole sonnet. This is also expressed by the exclamation  “yet by heaven” that has the function to strike the reader’s attention. Now the focus is not on the physical aspect but it is on love that is a key word in line 13. What matters now is not the idealized description of the woman but the feelings that the lyrical I perceives towards the woman. The rarity of his love is what makes the difference and what distinguishes the dark lady from all the others. They are referred to as “false”. This adjective is important because it shows the difference between the speaking voice’s true love and the world’s falseness. In addition the focus of the couplet is not on the outside qualities but everything is concentrated towards the true feeling that only true and rare love generates.