A.k.a. “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”
John’s related banter…
And lastly, let’s take a brief look at sonnet 130. One of the one’s addressed to the dark lady. This sonnet is almost a parody, a send up of Petrarch’s sonnets about the lovely Laura, whom he barely knew. That weird renaissance worship of the person you met just one time twenty years ago, and the constant exploration of every facet of their beauty, their mouth, their eyes, their cheeks, their hair—it gets a little overwhelming.
In sonnet 130 Shakespeare simultaneously does that and refuses to do that. Like if he suggested that a summer’s day wasn’t a good enough descriptor of his beloved, now he’s suggesting that if you compare his mistress to any of the typical stuff: suns roses, rose perfume, she’s going to fall very short. Her breasts are the color of dun, her hair is like black wires, sometimes her breath smells. This strange descriptive aggression characterizes many of the late sonnets, where the poet seems to feel ashamed about being attracted to this women.
But again, there’s a twist at the end as there is with every good sonnet’s final couplet. “Any yet by heaven I think my love as rare/ as any she belied by false compare.” Shakespeare isn’t saying look my mistress has onion breath. Instead the speaker is saying “All of you other poets have been exaggerating like crazy, including past me. If you were actually going to describe people realistically, his lover would be as beautiful as any other. So take that Coral and perfume and summer days.”
And for me at least, that humanization of the romantic other is, more romantic and ultimately more loving than any summer’s day. Plus she’s going to get to live forever, well, not actually, because we’re all gonna die. Even the species is going to cease to exist.
crashcourse | Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Crash Course Literature 304)
(Unquoted beginning)
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;
(Unquoted remainder)
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.
John Green Reads Poetry 