Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

                    By William Shakespeare

           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.

SONNET 130		PARAPHRASE
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;	My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;	Coral is far more red than her lips;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;	If snow is white, then her breasts are a brownish gray;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.	If hairs are like wires, hers are black and not golden.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,	I have seen damask roses, red and white [streaked],
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;	But I do not see such colors in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight	And some perfumes give more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.	Than the horrid breath of my mistress.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know	I love to hear her speak, but I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;	That music has a more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;	I've never seen a goddess walk;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:	But I know that my mistress walks only on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare	And yet I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.	As any woman who has been misrepresented by ridiculous comparisons.

Notes

dun (3): i.e., a dull brownish gray.

roses damasked, red and white (5): This line is possibly an allusion to the rose known as the York and Lancaster variety, which the House of Tudor adopted as its symbol after the War of the Roses. The York and Lancaster rose is red and white streaked, symbolic of the union of the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York. Compare The Taming of the Shrew: "Such war of white and red within her cheeks!" (4.5.32). Shakespeare mentions the damask rose often in his plays. Compare also Twelfth Night:

She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. (2.4.118)

than the breath...reeks (8): i.e., than in the breath that comes out of (reeks from) my mistress.
As the whole sonnet is a parody of the conventional love sonnets written by Shakespeare's contemporaries, one should think of the most common meaning of reeks, i.e., stinks. Shakespeare uses reeks often in his serious work, which illustrates the modern meaning of the word was common. Compare Macbeth:

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds
Or memorise another Golgotha,
I cannot tell. (1.2.44)

rare (13): special.

she (14): woman.

belied (14): misrepresented.

with false compare (14): i.e., by unbelievable, ridiculous comparisons.

Sonnet 130 is the poet's pragmatic tribute to his uncomely mistress, commonly referred to as the dark lady because of her dun complexion. The dark lady, who ultimately betrays the poet, appears in sonnets 127 to 154. Sonnet 130 is clearly a parody of the conventional love sonnet, made popular by Petrarch and, in particular, made popular in England by Sidney's use of the Petrarchan form in his epic poem Astrophel and Stella.

If you compare the stanzas of Astrophel and Stella to Sonnet 130, you will see exactly what elements of the conventional love sonnet Shakespeare is light-heartedly mocking. In Sonnet 130, there is no use of grandiose metaphor or allusion; he does not compare his love to Venus, there is no evocation to Morpheus, etc. The ordinary beauty and humanity of his lover are important to Shakespeare in this sonnet, and he deliberately uses typical love poetry metaphors against themselves.

In Sidney's work, for example, the features of the poet's lover are as beautiful and, at times, more beautiful than the finest pearls, diamonds, rubies, and silk. In Sonnet 130, the references to such objects of perfection are indeed present, but they are there to illustrate that his lover is not as beautiful -- a total rejection of Petrarch form and content. Shakespeare utilizes a new structure, through which the straightforward theme of his lover’s simplicity can be developed in the three quatrains and neatly concluded in the final couplet.

Thus, Shakespeare is using all the techniques available, including the sonnet structure itself, to enhance his parody of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet typified by Sidney’s work. But Shakespeare ends the sonnet by proclaiming his love for his mistress despite her lack of adornment, so he does finally embrace the fundamental theme in Petrarch's sonnets: total and consuming love.

One final note: To Elizabethan readers, Shakespeare's comparison of hair to 'wires' would refer to the finely-spun gold threads woven into fancy hair nets. Many poets of the time used this term as a benchmark of beauty, including Spenser:

Some angel she had been,
Her long loose yellow locks like golden wire,
Sprinkled with pearl, and pearling flowers atween,
Do like a golden mantle her attire,
And being crowned with a garland green. (Epithal).

Summary

1 . This sonnet compares the speaker’s lover to a number of other beauties—and never in the lover’s favor. Her eyes are “nothing like the sun,” her lips are less red than coral; compared to white snow, her breasts are dun-colored, and her hairs are like black wires on her head.
2. In the second quatrain, the speaker says he has seen roses separated by color (“damasked”) into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress’s cheeks; and he says the breath that “reeks” from his mistress is less delightful than perfume.
3.  In the third quatrain, he admits that, though he loves her voice, music “hath a far more pleasing sound,” and that, though he has never seen a goddess, his mistress—unlike goddesses—walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the speaker declares that, “by heav’n,” he thinks his love as rare and valuable “As any she belied with false compare”—that is, any love in which false comparisons were invoked to describe the loved one’s beauty.
Shakespeare’s most famous, plays an elaborate joke on the conventions of love poetry common to Shakespeare’s day, and it is so well-conceived that the joke remains funny today. Most sonnet sequences in Elizabethan England were modeled after that of Petrarch. Petrarch’s famous sonnet sequence was written as a series of love poems to an idealized and idolized mistress named Laura. In the sonnets, Petrarch praises her beauty, her worth, and her perfection using an extraordinary variety of metaphors based largely on natural beauties. In Shakespeare’s day, these metaphors had already become cliche (as, indeed, they still are today), but they were still the accepted technique for writing love poetry. The result was that poems tended to make highly idealizing comparisons between nature and the poets’ lover that were, if taken literally, completely ridiculous. My mistress’ eyes are like the sun; her lips are red as coral; her cheeks are like roses, her breasts are white as snow, her voice is like music, she is a goddess.
In many ways, Shakespeare’s sonnets subvert and reverse the conventions of the Petrarchan love sequence: the idealizing love poems, for instance, are written not to a perfect woman but to an admittedly imperfect man, and the love poems to the dark lady are anything but idealizing (“My love is as a fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease” is hardly a Petrarchan conceit.) Sonnet 130 mocks the typical Petrarchan metaphors by presenting a speaker who seems to take them at face value, and somewhat bemusedly, decides to tell the truth. Your mistress’ eyes are like the sun? That’s strange—my mistress’ eyes aren’t at all like the sun. Your mistress’ breath smells like perfume? My mistress’ breath reeks compared to perfume. In the couplet, then, the speaker shows his full intent, which is to insist that love does not need these conceits in order to be real; and women do not need to look like flowers or the sun in order to be beautiful.
The rhetorical structure of Sonnet 130 is important to its effect. In the first quatrain, the speaker spends one line on each comparison between his mistress and something else (the sun, coral, snow, and wires—the one positive thing in the whole poem some part of his mistress is like. In the second and third quatrains, he expands the descriptions to occupy two lines each, so that roses/cheeks, perfume/breath, music/voice, and goddess/mistress each receive a pair of unrhymed lines. This creates the effect of an expanding and developing argument, and neatly prevents the poem—which does, after all, rely on a single kind of joke for its first twelve lines—from becoming stagnant.

Sonnet 130 Introduction

In A Nutshell

This sonnet is part of a group of poems by William Shakespeare that scholars think was addressed to someone they call "The Dark Lady." We get little glimpses of her in this poem. Shakespeare talks about her hair, the color of her skin, etc. Mostly, though, this poem is a gentle parody of traditional love poetry. Shakespeare uses this sonnet to poke fun at the kinds of exaggerated comparisons some poets of his day made when talking about their lovers. He makes fun of clichéd images that were worn out even then, like "eyes like the sun," and "skin as white as snow." These kinds of over-the-top compliments appear everywhere in poems by writers like Petrarch, who wrote famous Italian sonnets in the 14th century. Although no one is sure whether the woman Shakespeare is talking about really existed, readers can see how well he uses this sonnet to skewer lame poetic clichés.

Why Should I Care?

So, when we say the words "love poem," what pops into your head? Maybe you've always thought that a love poem had to be sappy, like something you'd find in a Valentine's Day card. If we told you that the love poem we had in mind was over 400 years old, that might make it even worse, right? Old love poems bring to mind flowery language and the kind of unrealistic glop that you could never bring yourself to say with a straight face.

But, if you think sappy love poems are ridiculous, you're not alone – that's pretty much how Shakespeare felt too, and he spends these fourteen lines ripping that kind of poem apart. Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is a parody of the kind of insincere, sickly sweet love poems that authors have been writing (and a lot of people have been hating) for centuries. Now, don't get us wrong, we're not anti-love poetry and we can get into the sappy stuff sometimes too. But we're not fans of lame clichés, and we think it's pretty fun to watch Shakespeare go to town on them in this sonnet.

Sonnet 130 Summary

Sonnet 130 is like a love poem turned on its head. Usually, if you were talking about your beloved, you would go out of your way to praise her, to point all the ways that she is the best. In this case, though, Shakespeare spends this poem comparing his mistress's appearance to other things, and then telling us how she doesn't measure up to them. He goes through a whole laundry list, giving us details about the flaws of her body, her smell, even the sound of her voice. Then, at the end, he changes his tune and tells us about his real and complete love for her.

Section I (Lines 1-8) Summary

Line 1

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

• Here we are introduced for the first time to the main character in this poem, the speaker's "mistress."
• Today, when we use the word "mistress," it's usually to refer to a woman who is dating a married man. In Shakespeare, though, it was more general, like "my love" or "my darling."
• The speaker jumps right into his anti-love poem, letting us know that this lady's eyes aren't like the sun. Well, so what? We wouldn't really expect them to be, would we?
• As we read the next few lines though, we see that the comparison is a standard way of praising a beautiful woman in a poem. It's like saying, "her eyes are like sapphires."
• Our speaker is refusing to fall back on clichés though, instead telling us that this simile doesn't apply at all.

Line 2

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

• If you imagined a stereotypically beautiful woman, like a model in a magazine, she'd probably have red lips, right?
• Certain kinds of very red coral are polished and used to make jewelry so if you compared lips to coral, you'd be thinking of the most beautiful, shiny red thing you could imagine.
• Nope, says the speaker, that doesn't sound like my girlfriend's lips at all.

Line 3

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

• Next come the mistress's breasts.
• They get pretty much the same treatment as her lips.
• If the reddest red is like coral, then the whitest white is the color of snow. A poet could praise a woman for having skin as white as snow.
• Not here, though. This woman's skin isn't white, or even cream colored. Instead, the speaker calls it "dun," a sort of grayish-brown color.
• Be sure to notice the little changes here. In the first two lines, we hear only that the woman isn't like these other things (the sun, coral).
• Now we get an actual description, an adjective ("dun") that applies to her. Unfortunately, it just makes her sound uglier. Dun is a word often used to describe the color of a horse, and definitely not the kind of thing a woman would be thrilled to hear about her breasts.

Line 4

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

• Now things just get worse.
• If a poet wanted to be sentimental and sweet, he might compare his lover's hair to something soft, smooth, and shiny, like silk. Here though, the mistress's hair is compared to black wires sticking out of the top of her head.
• Keep in mind that the whole point of this poem is to push back against standard ways of talking about women in poems. So it's not necessarily bad that she has frizzy black hair.

Lines 5-6

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

• There's a tricky word here: damasked. Basically it just means a pattern of mixed colors woven into expensive fabric.
• So imagine a rose with a white and red pattern on it, or maybe a bouquet of red and white roses. Our speaker has seen beautiful roses like that, but his mistress's cheeks don't remind him of them at all.
• Maybe some perfectly beautiful woman has cheeks that are white with just a little blush of red, but that's not the woman he's talking about.

Lines 7-8

And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

• By now we've got the idea, right?
• The speaker tells us that some perfumes smell better (give more "delight") than this woman's lover's breath.
• Apparently she stinks, too.
• Let's recap quickly: so far the speaker said that his mistress's eyes aren't that great, that her lips aren't that red, that her skin is yellowish, that her hair is like wires, that her cheeks are nothing like roses, and that her breath reeks.
• What a way to start a love poem.

Section II (Lines 9-14) Summary

Lines 9-10

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

• Now, after all of that criticism, the speaker starts to get a little bit nicer.
• He admits that he really does "love to hear her speak." Seems like she was due for a compliment, doesn't it?
• The speaker can't just let it go at that, though, and immediately he starts to back up a little.
• Basically, that "yet" in the middle of line 9 gets us ready for a negative comparison. It's like saying, "You're really great, but…"
• Then, in line 10, we get the negative half of that thought: he thinks that music is "more pleasing" than the sound of her voice.
• Well, maybe that's not so bad after all. If your boyfriend or girlfriend said, "I like music more than the sound of your voice," you might not exactly be thrilled, but it sure beats having him or her tell you that your breath stinks.
• Maybe the speaker is softening up a little bit.

Line 11-12

I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

• Here's another thought that is split over two lines. In line 11, the speaker essentially tells us that he's willing to admit that he's never seen a goddess move. (See why Shakespeare's the poet and not us? Listen to how smoothly those words flow together: grant…goddess…go. Nice, huh?)
• Now, when the speaker finishes his thought on line 12, he's not actually being mean at all, just stating the facts. His mistress isn't a goddess, she doesn't fly or soar or float along. She just walks (treads) like a normal person, on the ground.
• A pretentious poet might say: "My love walks like a goddess," but we would know that it isn't true. Has he ever seen a goddess? Maybe the best way to tell someone you love him or her in a poem is to be simple, honest and straightforward.

Lines 13-14

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

·  As any she belied with false compare.

• Now, at long last, we get to the sweet part, but it might take a little bit of translating.
• Here are two lines in plain English: the speaker thinks that his lover is as wonderful ("rare") as any woman ("any she") who was ever misrepresented ("belied") by an exaggerated comparison ("false compare").
• These last two lines are the payoff for the whole poem. They serve as the punch-line for the joke. They drive home the speaker's main point, that unlike other people who write sonnets, he doesn't need flowery terms or fancy comparisons. He can just tell his mistress, plainly and simply, that he loves her for who she is. Awww…

Sonnet 130 Analysis

The Mistress

Symbol Analysis

She's definitely the star of this show. Every line refers to her, whether it's describing her appearance or her smell or the way she walks. We learn a few things about her, like the color of her hair and her skin. In general, though, she's a little more like an idea than a real person. Instead of being a fully drawn character like Hamlet or Juliet, she is mostly here to give the poet a chance to poke fun at exaggerated love poetry. We hear a lot about her, but for the most part, the information is rather vague and negative. Since all the images and symbols in this poem concern her in one way or another, we're going to put the different parts of her under the microscope, just like Shakespeare does.

Her Eyes

Symbol Analysis

Eyes are something we focus on in other people, so it's no surprise that they are always cropping up in love poetry. You know the old saying, "The eyes are the windows of the soul"? Well, that's just the kind of frequently used phrase that our speaker doesn't have much time for.

• Line 1: We start out with the speaker refusing to compare his lover's eyes to the sun. He picks a really out-there, exaggerated simile so that we can see just how silly this kind of comparison can be. So really, this is a negative simile: "x is not like y."

Her Lips

Symbol Analysis

Lips seem to be among the standard list of things you're supposed to notice in a beautiful woman. Think about a gorgeous movie star, for example. When she has a close-up in a particular scene, the camera tends to focus on her skin, her hair, her eyes, her breasts – all the things that Shakespeare includes here. The idea of breaking a woman into parts in order to praise her beauty has a really long history

• Line 2: Comparing lips to red coral gives us another slightly ridiculous over-the-top simile. Lips that red would have to be painted, and that's the kind of fake beauty that this poem is pushing back against.

Her Breasts

Symbol Analysis

For obvious reasons, breasts are a classic symbol of female beauty. We'll keep this G-rated, but you can see why talking about this woman's breasts forces us to think about how we define an ideal woman, and what seems beautiful about her.

• Line 3: Here the speaker avoids a direct simile. He just gives us the strong image of sparkling white snow, and lays it next to the equally strong image of dun (grayish-brown) breasts. He's playing with our associations with these colors. White is a long-standing symbol of purity, cleanliness, virginity, and all that Next to that squeaky clean image, the mistress's breasts seem dirty and polluted. But the speaker will go on to show us that these old stereotypes might not really mean much at all.

Her Hair

Symbol Analysis

Another major cliché about women's beauty is that their hair should be silky smooth and shiny. Shakespeare turn this assumption on its head in a big way in this poem. Readers in Shakespeare's time would have recognized all these worn-out comparisons as allusions to images in other love poems. Famous examples of traditional love sonnets include the poems of Petrarch, an Italian poet from the 14th century.

• Line 4: We think this image of hair as black wires sprouting out of her head is meant to gross you out a little bit. Sounds like a creepy doll, like Shakespeare meets the Bride of Chucky.

Her Cheeks

Symbol Analysis

If the ideal woman in Shakespeare's time was supposed to have skin as white as snow and smooth and blond hair, then her cheeks are probably going to have to be pink and rosy too. You've probably picked up the pattern by now. The more clichés the speaker piles on, the more we see what a silly way this is to compliment someone.

• Line 6: The speaker takes the standard image of rosy cheeks a step further here, pretending to be surprised that there aren't actually red and white roses in this woman's cheeks. When you put it like that, it makes the whole metaphor (i.e. "her cheeks are roses") sound pretty dumb.

Her Breath

Symbol Analysis

Faults such as your hair not being just right, or your eyes being the wrong color, might be easy to overlook; but bad breath, that's something else altogether. Shakespeare seems to be having fun here, pushing his gross-out portrait as far as it will go.

• Line 8: The word "reeks" brings up a really strong image of just how far from perfect this woman is. By hitting us over the head with her very human flaws, the speaker forces us to take a look at our definitions of female beauty. Just like the "black wires" (line 4), this line pushes our boundaries a little, turning the love poem into a criticism, but a pretty fun one.

Her Voice

Symbol Analysis

Just a couple more things to round out the list. She should of course have a beautiful voice to go with all the rest of it. Or maybe not…

• Lines 9-10: As always, the speaker rejects the obvious simile ("her voice is like music"), but this time he's being a little nicer. He doesn't say, "She sounds like a frog with laryngitis." In fact, he goes out of his way to say that he loves the sound of her voice. He just thinks that comparing her voice to music is going too far.

The Way She Moves…

Symbol Analysis

Of course this perfect woman that the speaker is taking apart would have to be as graceful as an angel too. Throughout the poem he's been setting up two portraits, side by side. One is of an ideal fantasy woman that he can't begin to believe in, and the other is of the real, imperfect woman he loves. In these last lines the speaker chooses the real woman over the goddess that he has never even seen.

• Line 11: We want to take a second to dork out about the alliteration in this line. Check out the way those three "g" words: "grant…goddess…go" make the line float along as gracefully as a goddess. Fun, huh? Plus, comparing a normal woman to a goddess is a complete exaggeration (or hyperbole as we English literature folks like to say), and that's exactly what this poem is trying to get us away from.

Analysis: Form and Meter

Shakespearean Sonnet

There are lots of different ways to write a sonnet, which is basically a kind of short poem. Shakespeare's sonnets have a very specific form, though, and scholars have named that form the "Shakespearean sonnet" after the great bard. These kinds of sonnets have several things in common:

1. They are 14 lines long.
2. They are written in iambic pentameter.
3. Usually, they include a feature called a "turn." This is a moment in the poem where the theme or the tone changes in a surprising way. This particular sonnet gives a really nice example of the turn. It comes in the last two lines, where the speaker switches his strategy completely. He has been criticizing his mistress, and then, all of a sudden, he starts telling us how much he loves her.
4. The first twelve lines rhyme in alternating pairs. To show how this works, we can assign a letter to each rhyme: We'll show you how it works:
   
   My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; A
   Coral is far more red than her lips' red; B
   If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; A
   If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. B
   
   So, for the whole poem, the rhyme scheme would be ABABCDCDEFEFGG.
5. See those last two letters at the end? This is the last important thing to know about the form of a Shakespearean sonnet: the poem always ends with two rhyming lines, one right after the other. We call this a couplet. Here's the one from the end of this poem:And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare G
   As any she belied with false compare. G

Analysis: Speaker

This speaker sounds like the guy at the back of your class who is always cracking jokes. He can't stand to do anything the way other people do, and even when he's supposed to be serious, he has to find a way to poke fun. In this case, it feels like his teacher has told him to write a love poem. He's finally done it, but not without making fun of the whole idea of love poems. So, yeah, he might drive people around him crazy. On the other hand, his sarcastic tone keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously, and he has a way of turning things on their head and making us see them in a new way. Finally, even though the speaker can't be serious for more than two lines, he still shows, at the end, that he has a sincere and thoughtful side, and that he can let his guard down long enough to let people see that side.

Analysis: Setting

Where It All Goes Down

Though no setting is explicitly stated, we're imagining this poem set in a courtroom. We know it's a love poem and all, but listen to the way it's presented. The speaker gives us this list of evidence, and really digs into the details. He runs down the charges against his mistress as if he were an attorney, and then, at the last moment, he makes a sudden appeal for her.

Think about the places you would usually set such a poem. It's too mean to be set in the mistress's bedroom, with the speaker whispering in her ear. He's having too much fun to imagine him sitting alone in his room dreaming about her. Instead we see him pacing up and down in front of the jury, admitting that his client does indeed have bad breath, but then asking them to let her off anyway. Maybe he turns to the judge to deliver a dramatic point here and there, like that one about the goddess (line 11). Then at last, we can almost hear him bang on the table and say, "Ladies and gentleman of the jury, even though my client is unattractive and reeks, she still deserves to be loved!"

Analysis: Sound Check

So you might think we're nuts, but we think this poem sounds like a cat's feet as it moves across a room. Just listen to the way these lines stop and start. The first line picks up speed, patters along gracefully, and then comes to a stop. Imagine the cat running across a table, stopping, and then starting up again. Sometimes even in the middle of a line the poem will pause, before heading off in a new direction, like in line 3: "If snow be white, why then her breasts be dun." We get a quick little dash through the white snow bit, then a pause at the comma, and we take off running again.

We thought about horse's hooves, galloping and then stopping, but do you hear how soft and elegant these lines are? Even when the image the speaker presents is gross or weird, there's a lightness to the sound. It manages to both stop and start and to flow along beautifully, just like an almost-silent, watchful cat dashing from place to place.

Analysis: What's Up With the Title?

None of Shakespeare's sonnets have titles, so we refer to them by number, in this case, 130. These numbers come from the order in which the poems were first published in 1609. The order actually matters a lot, since the sonnets can be roughly separated into groups based on their subject matter. Sonnet 130 comes from a whole group of sonnets that scholars think are addressed to a "Dark Lady." They call her that because she has black hair and dark features, like we see in this poem.

You might also see this poem referred to by its first line, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." This puts a double emphasis on the first line, and has helped to make it a famously quotable line in English literature.

Analysis: Calling Card

Irreverent (but also Sincere) Love Poetry

We can tell right off the bat that this is a Shakespearean sonnet. That form (14 lines of iambic pentameter with the last two lines rhyming) is a dead giveaway. There are lots of different themes in Shakespeare's sonnets, but they share this playful and sweet tone. Shakespeare can have fun, toy with our ideas, play with the words, and finally bring us back to a really sincere and important point. Check out how he does this in the last two lines of this poem. He's been fooling around, mocking other poets, when all of a sudden he drops a real confession of love on us. Long story short: Shakespeare is the master.

Analysis: Tough-O-Meter

Base Camp (3)

Once you get the hang of Shakespeare's language, and figure out the joke (he's actually trying to be nice!), this poem should be pretty fun and easy.

Analysis: Brain Snacks

Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge

There has been a lot of talk about who the mysterious woman in this poem might have been. Because of her wiry hair and dun skin, some have speculated that Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" may have been of African descent. (Source)
Or maybe (others think) she was a married woman named Emilia Lanier who came from a Jewish background. There's a pretty interesting bit about her on PBS.

Analysis: Sex Rating

Exactly how steamy is this poem?

He does mention her breasts (line 3), but in general this is pretty family-friendly love poetry.

Sonnet 130 Themes

Like many of Shakespeare's sonnets, this poem is an expression of love. In order to express your love, you have to talk about it, define it, examine it. In telling his mistress that he loves her, our speaker also has to give us an idea about what his love is like. This poem is partly about where love comes from, what motivates our feelings of affection for someone else. Specifically, it's about finding love in spite of (or maybe even because of) physical flaws.

Questions About Love

1. How does the speaker of the poem define his love for his mistress?
2. How is this love poem different from other ones you have read? What do those differences say about the idea of love in this poem?
3. Does this guy seem like a jerk to you? Is this really what a person is supposed to sound like when he professes his love?
4. What if the order of lines in this poem were reversed? What if the speaker started out by telling the girl he loves her, only then going on to the negative points? How would this change our experience of the poem?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

The speaker of this poem keeps his reasons for loving this woman to himself. He makes it clear that her appearance isn't crucial, but most of his positive feelings about her remain a mystery.

This poem reveals an ambiguous kind of love, one that seems heartfelt and sincere, but also tinged with a kind of harsh anger. The conflict between these two feelings is never fully resolved.

Sonnet 130 Love Quotes

Quote #1

I love to hear her speak (line 9)
It takes him more than half of the poem to get there, but the speaker finally says that he loves something about his mistress. This is a big turn in the poem, a shift from a list of criticisms toward an actual confession of love. That's not to say that everything changes, since he still admits that the sound of her voice isn't as beautiful as music (line 10). Still, we can see where he's headed now. He doesn't need perfection in order to love.

Quote #2

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground (line 12)
This is a really nice image of the simple beauty that the speaker loves. Why would you expect, or even want, your lover to float around like a goddess? What good does it do to compare someone to an imaginary perfect creature when the real living, breathing person is right there? Have you ever felt this way? Think about someone you love, whether a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a really good friend. Do you love her because she never makes mistakes, because her hair is perfect, because she's always clever? Or do you love him just as much (or even more?) for being goofy, or clumsy, or for looking less than perfect?

Quote #3

…I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare (line 13)
Here's where the speaker finally just comes out and says it. Other poets might make up fancy comparisons for their lovers, pretending that they are as perfect as a goddess, as white as snow, etc. He refuses to do that; he simply loves this woman for what she is.

This whole poem, while seeming like a criticism of this woman, is actually a parody of other poets. Still, we wonder if those earlier lines leave a bad taste in your mouth. If someone told you that your breath stinks, and then said he loved you anyway, would you be thrilled? Does the end justify the earlier lines? Is this what real love looks like?

Sonnet 130 Theme of Appearances

"Appearances" is a major theme in Sonnet 130, since our speaker spends a lot of the poem talking about what's wrong with his mistress's looks. He does a pretty complete dissection of her face, her body, and her smell. He doesn't say anything at all about her personality, but instead sticks to his laundry list of problems with her appearance. This gives Shakespeare a chance to poke fun at our obsession with looks and to show how ridiculous it is to ask any person to live up to some ideal of perfect beauty.

Questions About Appearances

1. Do you notice flaws in the people that you love? Do you ever tell them about these imperfections?
2. Do you think that true love requires you to be honest about things like appearance? Or do you think that love requires the kind of flattering little lies that the speaker refuses to tell?
3. Is this poem making you want to brush your teeth and get a haircut? It's kind of doing that for us, to be honest.
4. Are there parts of this poem that seem to go too far, that are overly critical of this woman's appearance?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

By pushing his criticisms of his mistress's appearance to the edge, the speaker makes his return to the theme of love even more effective. The contrast between mockery and love is what drives the poem.

Even though the speaker eventually says how much he loves her, he has said such nasty things about his mistress that it makes him hard to believe. He has damaged his credibility.

Sonnet 130 Appearances Quotes

Quote #1

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (line 1)
We start out talking about appearance right away. This whole poem is about beauty – the things we find attractive and the stereotypes we have about what women should look like. In this line the speaker starts out talking about his lover's eyes, and we expect him to give her a compliment, because that's what we've heard in a million different poems and songs. Instead, he switches it up on us, telling us that her "eyes are nothing like the sun." At first, it may be a little hard to figure out what this means. The comparison of eyes to the sun is a bit odd. Still, as we keep reading, we figure the speaker's strategy out pretty quickly.

Quote #2

Coral is far more red than her lips' red; (line 2)
The game here is to pick a clichéd image from a love poem and then blow it up. Someone writing a normal love sonnet might say, "My lover's lips are as red as coral." Shakespeare says, "No way!" He refuses this unrealistic comparison, choosing instead to ground his love in a truthful (and even somewhat harsh) assessment of what his mistress really looks like.

Quote #3

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. (line 4)
Again, if you wanted to compliment someone on his or her hair, you probably wouldn't say, "Oh baby, your hair looks super wiry today." This makes his mistress sound like she just stuck a fork in an outlet. The point is the same as in the earlier lines. The speaker refuses to lie about his mistress's beauty. At the same time, he's starting to tell us something specific about the way this woman looks. We just learned that she has darkish (dun) skin (line 3). Now we find out that her hair is black. Not only are these not the most standard features for a fantasy woman in Western poetry, but they also give us the sense that our speaker is imagining a specific woman.
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. (lines 7-8)
So maybe in the 17th century no one's breath smelled that amazing. This is a long time before mouthwash. Still, this criticism seems a little harsh to us. It's one thing to say that someone's lips aren't coral red, but quite another thing to say that she stinks. Shakespeare is pushing the satire just about as far as it will go, dissecting everything about this woman's appearance. After this, he starts to pull back, and the next line is much sweeter: "I love to hear her speak" (line 9).

Sonnet 130 Theme of Women and Femininity

In Sonnet 130, the theme "Women and Femininity" is connected to the idea of appearances. This poem is all about female beauty and our expectations and stereotypes about the way women ought to look. You know how in magazines women pretty much tend to look the same? They all fit into a very narrow definition of what is beautiful. Essentially, the speaker in this poem is pointing out that love poetry does the same thing. It makes women into goddesses, not real human beings. He insists that his idea of beautiful femininity doesn't depend on fitting an abstract, unrealistic fantasy.

Questions About Women and Femininity

1. Do you think that this poem is a brave and exciting statement about women and their beauty? Or is it just kind of a joke?
2. In our summary of this theme, we mentioned magazines and the media and their unrealistic standards of female beauty. Do you think this is the same issue we see in this poem? Why or why not?
3. Does it matter that the person the speaker describes is a woman? Could you write a poem like this about a man?
4. Are the rules different for male and female beauty? Do you think that's what this poem is about, or is the idea of gender less important than questions of love?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Shakespeare uses this sonnet not only to satirize bad poetry, but also to criticize the unrealistic expectations that men have for female beauty.

Although the subject of this poem is a woman, this speaker is talking about questions of love and honesty that could apply equally to men and women.

 

Sonnet 130 Women and Femininity Quotes

Quote #1

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; (line 3)
This line points out a particularly unrealistic stereotype about women's beauty. Skin that is literally as white a snow would probably be scary. The speaker lets us know that his lover doesn't come close to that spooky ideal. He also goes out of his way to refer to her breasts. He could as easily have said, "her skin is dun." This choice emphasizes the importance of her femininity, and encourages us to think about how poetry depicts women.

While we're on the subject of appearance, we should point out that there is a definite racial side to this talk about beauty. This line could only describe a perfect woman if that woman happened to be white. Shakespeare doesn't say anything about this woman's race, but with her black hair and dark skin, we can definitely tell that she doesn't look like a Barbie doll.

Quote #2

And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. (lines 7-8)
If people have stereotypes about how women should look, they have even more assumptions abut how they should smell. The ideal woman in a poem probably isn't supposed to smell at all, unless she smells like perfume. The idea of a beautiful woman with foul breath was probably as weird for people in Shakespeare's time as it is for us. So this is just one more way the speaker scrambles our expectations. Instead of a woman who smells like a rose, he gives us a woman who smells bad. Even though he's not being particularly nice, he's also refusing to base his love on some bland, worn-out poetic stereotype.

Quote #3

I grant I never saw a goddess go; (line 11)
What is a goddess but the most perfect, ideal, flawless woman possible? The trouble is, mortal women simply cannot rival immortal goddesses. If you compare a woman you know to a goddess, you're just going to wind up disappointed. So the speaker of this poem is just asking us to take a step back. He wants us to remember that it isn't really fair to compare someone you love to some fantasy woman that you've never even seen.
…I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare (line 13)
This is the payoff for all of this criticism of his mistress. He has shown us in this sonnet that chasing after some made-up ideal will only make you miserable. In fact, if you compare women to white snow or red coral, then you have belied, or misrepresented, them. He loves this particular woman even though she can't begin to measure up to the perfection of a goddess.

Sonnet 130 Theme of Literature and Writing

The theme of "Literature and Writing" is sort of flying under the radar in this poem, but we think it's important. The whole point of this poem is to gently mock the clichéd love poems written by other authors. The speaker isn't actually making fun of his own lover so much as he is pointing out how ridiculous poetic comparisons can become. In that sense, this is a poem about other poems as much as it is about a particular woman with frizzy black hair.

Questions About Literature and Writing

1. How critical do you think the speaker of this poem is being of other poets? Does he seem to be gently making fun of standard love poetry or is he really attacking it?
2. Do you think there's a place for sappy love poetry? Is it fair to criticize something that was never really designed to be realistic?
3. Try a quick exercise – write out the serious, "normal" version of this poem (or just try to imagine it). What would it look like without all the negative comparisons? For example: "My mistress' eyes are like the sun/ Her lips are as red as coral, etc." What do you think about this new poem?
4. Can you think of a poem or a song or a movie that you love because it's really unrealistic, and shows a kind of love that could never exist in the world?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

As he gently mocks traditional love poems, the speaker manages to maintain a light tone. This playfulness makes it easier for him to turn the subject back to true love and finish the poem on a sweet and cheerful note.

Although it is meant to be a parody of romantic poetry, Sonnet 130 misses the fun of those other poems. By ignoring the playful nature of those exaggerated comparisons, our speaker ends up being the one who sounds like he isn't getting the joke.

Sonnet 130 Literature and Writing Quotes

Quote #1

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks; (lines 5-6)
Here's a moment where Shakespeare pokes fun at an especially "poetic" phrase. Comparing cheeks to roses is already a bit of a cliché, and all of this stuff about "damasked, red and white" just takes it a step further. He uses this lame image to make us see how far from the reality of love some writing can be. Sure we might enjoy these fancy phrases, but what do they really say about our experiences, our daily lives, and our feelings?

Quote #2

I grant I never saw a goddess go; (line 11)
This is also a reference to a whole tradition of fancy-pants poetic language. If you really wanted to seem like a smart, cool guy, you'd toss in a few mythological allusions. Your girlfriend would suddenly become Venus or Helen or Diana. Our speaker will have none of this. He tosses aside the poetic world of goddesses and myths, instead praising his woman who walks on the ground.

Quote #3

…I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare (line 13)
This is another swipe at love poetry. Those poems do nothing, says our speaker, other than make up false comparisons and pretty lies about women. That kind of flattery doesn't improve anything. It just misrepresents women, who don't need fancy phrases in order to be wonderful or "rare."

Sonnet 130 Questions

Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.

1. Do you think the last two lines make up for the rest of the things the speaker says about his mistress? Would you think it was charming if someone wrote this poem about you?
2. Does Shakespeare make a fair point? Do some love poems take these comparisons too far? Or this exactly the place for fancy phrases?
3. Have you ever tried to write someone a love poem? Did you actually send it? How did it go over?
4. Shakespeare wrote this poem about 400 years ago. Does it feel like an old poem? In what ways? If you changed the language a little, could this poem have been written today? Why or why not?
5. Do you feel like the speaker is describing a specific person? If so, what makes it seem that way? If not, why not?