Let's see if we can shed some light on
Sonnet 130, by William Shakespeare. Now we
know that Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets
and the first 126 of these are addressed
to a man, and the last number (so 127 to the end) ... these ones are addressed
to a woman. This woman has traditionally
been referred to as the Dark Lady ...
It's a nice phrase, but it
may be a bit of a misnomer because we
don't know if she was a lady -- if she was an aristocratic figure -- and we also
don't know if she was literally dark. In
this poem it refers to the black wires
that grow on her head. So she may have
had dark hair but in the very next sonnet ...
in sonnet 131 Shakespeare writes, "In
nothing art thou black save in thy deeds."
It's your actions that make you dark.
They're almost criminal! How could
you not love me? So is she literally the
dark lady? Well, we don't know, but it's
definitely a nice kind of romantic
phrase isn't it? This poem is not just
about her. It's also about sonnets
themselves. It's about the rage for the
sonnet [form], and that's hard to believe maybe now, but sonnets were really popular
during this period. In England that
really started in the early 1590s,
especially after the publication of Sir
Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella" in
1591. That really started this
kind of craze, this vogue, for the sonnet
sequence. A sonnet sequence then is
really just a collection of poems, a
collection of sonnets. It's always
good to remember that we do have this
larger context of all of these other
sonnets and that sonnets can kind of
start talking about themselves --
kind of like rappers do ... they talk about
their own songs and each other and so on.
Sonneteers, or poets who write
sonnets, they do the same thing: they talk
about sonnets. This poem is really
making fun of other sonnets as we'll see.
So these other
sonnets -- they're often very lavish in
their praise, and the kind of sonnet that
this one is making fun of has a name.
This kind of sonnet is called a "blazon" ...
You might see this with
an "s" as well. So you can spell it with a
"z" or with an ".s" This term (blazon) comes
from the world of heraldry. In
heraldry what it refers to is a coat of
arms, or a description of a coat of arms.
So either one of those will do, and you
can kind of see how this is similar to
poems that describe the woman's body,
because what they do is they describe
her, they catalogue  her from head to toe.
Every body part is sort of catalogued,
and is praised, lauded, and much too
lavishly often. So if you look at poems
from the time period, [here] just a few
comparisons that you might come across:
the lady's eyes are sometimes described
as as bright as the sun, her teeth are
like pearls, [and] her eyebrows are like
Cupid's bows because they're
curved like bows and ... Cupid could shoot arrows with them
and wound you in the heart. So, very
melodramatic! That's kind of what many
of these sonnets were saying, and
Shakespeare is making fun of that -- that
kind of blazon. But this tradition of
describing the woman in these lavish
terms goes back much further than simply
the late 16th and early 17th century.
As a point of comparison here I
have a passage from the Bible. This is
the Song of Songs from the Old Testament,
and you can see that we have some very
similar comparisons here in terms of how
the different body parts are described.
So we have the teeth like a flock
of sheep, your lips are like a scarlet
ribbon, your temples are like the halves
of a pomegranate, and then this last bit
is kind of interesting: your neck is like
the Tower of David. Most of us wouldn't
describe a woman that way any more, but
it does kind of relate this to heraldry,
that there seems to be some similarity
between describing a coat of arms and
describing a woman. Kind of fascinating
isn't it? Okay, so what is this poem then?
Well, it's an anti blazon. It's making
fun of that kind of over-the-top
description by giving similar
over-the-top description, but now of the
lady's worst parts! And then we can see
that this poem is not just about the
woman, but it's also making fun of other
sonnet writers. So now that we know some
context then we're in a position to go
through the poem and make sense of a few
difficult words.
In the first line we have the word
"mistress," and the word "mistress" does not
necessarily mean our sense of mistress.
If you are being unfaithful to your
spouse and you have a mistress on the
side -- that's not quite what's
meant here necessarily. During this time
period, "mistress" could mean a woman in
authority, or it could mean a sweetheart,
a beloved, and I think it's that second
sense of "my sweetheart's eyes" that's more prominent here. Then we have the word
"dun" in line three here. And the word
"dun" means dull grayish brown. We
would probably say tanned. So what he's
really saying here is that her breasts
are tanned. We would say 
that's a great compliment! She can go to
a tanning salon ... But in this
period of course having white skin was
seen as a mark of being aristocratic --
being able to shelter yourself from the
sun and not having to work outside in
the fields. So this is not really the
compliment that we might expect. Then we
have the word "wires," and this again is a
bit of an odd one because we think of
electrical wires. We want to hide
any kind of wire we see. But you have to
remember that this is before the
industrial era and so wires could be
seen as a compliment. In some sonnets
you actually have comparisons to let's
say golden thread (her hair is like
golden thread), so he's basically saying
if hairs be wires, if you want to make that
comparison, well, she's got black wires.
She's got tarnished kind of wires on her
head. Then we have the word "damasked" in line five here, and the word "damasked"
means variegated, or mixed. You can
think of roses, so if you have a hybrid
species of rose then you have sort
of mixed the colors. He's saying here,
I have seen beautiful kind of
hybrid, mixed roses that are red and
white, but I don't see those colors
nicely mixed in her cheeks. Her
cheeks are pale and they lack color, so
don't expect to see any beauty here.
You can see now that this whole opening
part is full of insults. He really says
"my mistress' eyes are not as bright
as the sun" -- they don't shine beautifully.
Coral is a lot more red than her lips'
red. So the red of her lips is not really
there. Her lips are probably chapped. Her
breasts are definitely not snowy white,
and so on and so forth.
One word that may need a little bit of
clarification is this words "reeks," because
for us it really means to smell badly.
But during this period it probably just
meant something like "to come out
of, to rise." And so it doesn't have to
have that connotation of smells badly,
although that is I think the
implication -- that her breath is
definitely not perfume. And then we get
to the last couple of lines and I think
you can make sense of most of this
in-between yourself ... So she's not a
goddess when she walks; she really kind
of stomps on the ground. And then the
last two lines are the most difficult. So
these are the rhyming couplet. The
last bit is the rhyming couplet. And
Shakespeare writes here, "And yet, by
heaven, I think my love as rare as any
she belied with false compare." This word
"rare" is sort of a mix of marvelous, special but also unusual.
Shakespeare is playing with
those meanings, so you might translate
this is as something like "unique."
Both unusual and special and
wonderful at the same time. Think of a
diamond in that sense. A diamond has those
qualities too. The words "she" is the
hardest word here perhaps because it
actually just means "woman." So don't think
of it as the pronoun. The pronoun
stands in for the word "woman" here. So "as any woman belied with false compare." And
then this word "belied" means
"misrepresented."  And the last
bit is "false comparisons." What Shakespeare is really saying then at the
end is, "and yet by heaven I
think my love, my beloved one, my
girl, is as unique as any woman who has
been misrepresented with false
comparisons." What he's talking about
is these blazons. All of these poets who
go, "Ah, my beloved is so beautiful, 
her eyes are like the sun, her lips ...
are like coral ..." And
Shakespeare says none of these things
are true. They're all misrepresentations. They're all lies and
in the meantime I'm telling you the
truth. So it may sound like I'm insulting
you, but actually you should love me,
because I am honest. Isn't that nice?
That's sort of the general argument
here and what we have to make sense of
then is this final kind of poetic turn,
as it's sometimes called. At the very end
we have this poetic turn where he goes,
"okay, I just insulted you for 12 lines,
but then when we get to the rhyming
couplet I'm going to turn it around and
say, "and yet ... even though I've
said all of these nasty things, I think
you're special, because I am being honest
and I'm not telling you lies like these
other poets but I'm telling you how it
really is. I think you're unique
and that should count for something!"
Alright, hopefully that makes some
sense of the poem then. We've talked
about the context, we've talked about
the basic meaning -- the last thing we
really need to focus on is what do we
take away from this? What's the
significance of this, and how should you
interpret the tone and the meaning of
this poem? This is really where you
get to analysis and interpretation. If you're writing an essay this is where
you have to kind of make a statement or
make a claim. So let's see what are some
things that you can talk about in an
analysis.  The first thing I think that's
important is simply your gut response to
the poem. I've sometimes asked
students what they would do if somebody
recited his poem to them. The
majority of students would actually say,
"well, I think I would slap that person in
the face! I wouldn't put up with this! It
may sound kind of nice at the end but
there are just too many insults and I
can't forgive that." And then there are
those kind of innocent souls, those
wonderful people who say, "Ah, but he means
so well, and I'm sure he's really kind,
and maybe the ending ... makes
up for everything that came before." So
that I think is interesting -- the way
people respond to this differently -- and
that really does raise this kind of
fundamental question about this poem. The fundamental question has to do with
honesty. Is Shakespeare being honest, and
what this honesty mean?
Is he being honest? Because he sort of
sort of seems like it on the surface. He
seems to be saying, all these other
poets are telling lies, but I'm being
honest. And I think one of the first
things that comes out of that that you
have to investigate is, what is
honesty? Is he really telling the truth?
and I think if we have sort of this
continuum, if we think of the
extremes, then on the one hand you have
the blazon, which is over the top, and is
all lavish praise all the time, and then
on the other extreme you have insults.
So where is this poem? Is it in
the middle then? Is that honesty? Yeah,
she's not extremely beautiful, but she's
nice. Or does this tend more
towards an insult? I would say 
it's actually way more on this
side. And is that honest? Or
is it really the pendulum kind of
swinging from one extreme to the other.
So that's one of the big questions
that you have to consider. A lot of
this has to do with tone then. What is
the tone of this poem? Is it sarcastic? Is
it tongue-in-cheek? Is it trying to be
honest at the end?
I wouldn't be too reverent towards
Shakespeare. I know a lot of students
... have encountered
Shakespeare in high school and they kind
of go, "well, I have to admire this guy
apparently. He's such a genius. He must be
romantic, he must be serious." But no.
Really take Shakespeare as somebody who
is trying to be clever, he's trying to
show off and he's not doing that just
for his beloved. He's also doing it to
have this kind of poetic competition
with other people. And that gets at
this question of audience. So who is the
intended audience for this poem? Is this
really addressed to his beloved? I
don't think so, because if you address a
poem to your beloved you don't say "my
mistress." You write "your eyes." So
this is in the third person. It's all in the
third person. It's saying, she is like
that. So who's he talking to?
Is this like locker room talk between
guys? Is this guys talking about a
woman, saying, my woman is like this,
and other guys say my woman is
like that. It becomes this sort of
competition between men, and I think that
should really trouble us. It does
lead to this larger concern over
misogyny. So we have this larger concern
over misogyny and the word "misogyny"
refers to hating women. Now do we want to
accuse Shakespeare of misogyny? Possibly. We might because it might be actually
quite a misogynistic poem, and maybe he's
not just insulting one woman, but he's
implying that many women are like this,
and this is how you should treat them,
because all these other women --
they have been lied to. These other women
have been lied to, and what does that
imply? That they aren't beautiful? How far
again is this pendulum
swinging? I think that's sort
of the bigger question behind it. So
we have a question of honesty then. We
have a question of audience, and what
we're starting to see here is that
Shakespeare is actually much less
interested in the woman than he is in
his own fame. So this question of fame
that's important. He's basically using
her for fairly selfish purposes -- to make
fun of other
sonneteers. And so she is there not so
much to be remembered herself, but to be
kind of used and abused in some ways so
that Shakespeare can say, "look at me. I'm
so witty. I'm so clever.
I can turn it all around at the end
and  salvage something out of
all of these insults." So those are really
the fundamental questions that you have
to ask, and I think by going through this
you might be a little bit confused. You
might say, but that doesn't really help,
because now I have all these questions,
and I don't know if this poem
is misogynistic, I don't know if 
Shakespeare doesn't love her, I don't
know if he's being honest or not, I don't
know how far the pendulum swings. But
that's okay. You don't have to settle all of
these questions. You don't have to have
all clear answers to every last question.
And I also think that when you come to
this poem again and you read it in
relation to other sonnets you start to
see that there are 154 sonnets and
they're all a little bit different. Each
one is a little mini-argument. Each one
says, "look at me, I'm so clever! I'm a new
attempt to get you into bed with. me I'm
a new attempt to persuade you that I'm
worth loving. I'm a new attempt not to
persuade you, but to persuade others that
I'm a clever poet, and [that] I should be
remembered." There's all of these
different arguments in all of these
sonnets, and part of it is the fun of
reading sonnets is just to see what
Shakespeare can come up with. What kind
of clever argument can he use now to try
to persuade somebody? So that's a big
part of the appeal of sonnets, and then
of course we do have all
so those sonnets that are more romantic,
that are beautiful and so on, but I don't
know that this one fits with those
sonnets. This is a comical sonnet. It's a form of satire and parody,
and so it's a little bit different than
what you might find in a different kind
of sonnet. But I hope this helps you make
some sense of this poem and hopefully
now you can see how it works in relation
to the historical time period and the
sonnet sequence, the sonnet form itself.
