My mistress’ eyes

William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616

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 damasked, 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 belongs to the sequence of the Dark Lady.

‘Mistress’ was the woman who the man secretly loved. The man was totally subdued and subjugated by the mistress: he couldn’t help attending the mistress.

In the title, the poet employs a device on the phonological level: the alliteration of sound ‘m’ expresses the speaking voice’s need of attention. In addition the same alliteration of sound ‘m’ ties the words and communicates the passionate chose and intimate relationship between the speaking voice and the addressee.

In the first line there is a slimily that expresses a negative comparison between the sun and the speaker’s mistress’ eyes. Similarly, in the following lines, there is an accumulation of similes that express negative qualities of the speaking voice’s mistress’ parts of body.

The whole three quatrains rest on a sequence of similes in which the vehicles (the traditional conventions of court love poetry) are always more positive than the tenors (his mistress’ parts of body).

In each line the speaker develops a comparison, but finally his mistress’ qualities are always defeated by the natural elements.

At line 1 the speaker compares 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.

The accumulation of negative similes makes the reader understand that the speaker’s mistress has got nothing of the traditional woman of the Stilnovo. The Dark Lady is a parody of the traditional praised angle-woman.

In the upsetting of traditional conventions of courteous love code, Shakespeare also underlines  new parts of the body. On the semantic level the most unusual element introduced is his mistress’ breasts. It is a signal of that distance from the courteous period, and of the definitive passage to a laical culture.

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 Shakespeare wants to convey is that you can fall in love with somebody independently from the his or her appearance and from standard of beauty.