Student Question
What details about his mistress' appearance does the speaker provide in Sonnet 130?
Quick answer:
In "Sonnet 130," the speaker details his mistress' appearance by contrasting her with typical poetic ideals. He describes her eyes as unlike the sun, her lips less red than coral, her skin as gray-brown, her hair as black wire, her cheeks pale, her breath unpleasant, and her walk heavy. Despite these seemingly unflattering comparisons, he concludes by affirming her rarity and true value, critiquing the exaggerated beauty standards often found in poetry.
The details provided about the speaker's mistress in "Sonnet 130" are made known more by what the speaker says she isn't than what she is. In fact, the whole sonnet is a sort of knowing wink at the audience that -- while seeming to be poking fun at a lover's looks -- is actually having a little fun with the sonnet form itself.
First, let's look at what the speaker is doing in this sonnet. Rather than praise his mistress' beauty -- a common subject in sonnets -- the speaker goes out of his way to all but call her ugly! "Sonnet 130" is even more remarkable when you consider that Shakespeare himself was a master of praising a lover's beauty, which he did perhaps most famously in "Sonnet 18", which begins
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and...
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more temperate."
(lines 1-2)
But in "Sonnet 130", we get an entirely different set up. In fact, it seems to start with two insults:
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red."
(lines 1-2)
In other words, this girl's eyes have no glimmer to them and her lips are the dullest red you could imagine. The speaker lays it on thick for the next ten lines, saying that her skin has a grey-brown color (the "dun" mentioned in line 3), her hair is as rough as "black wire" (line 4), her cheeks are pale (line 5), she plods along when she walks (line 12), and even her breath leaves something to be desired (line 8). Thus, the picture he paints of his mistress is of a dull-eyed, dark-grey-skinned, pale-lipped, wiry-haired woman with a heavy gait and bad breath -- not what you'd expect to find in a poetic style typically reserved for extreme praise!
But, as often happens in Shakespeare's sonnets, there's a little surprise waiting for us in his final rhyming couplet. For even though the first 12 lines of "Sonnet 130" read like some kind of "anti-sonnet", in the last two lines the speaker turns the tables on us. He tells us that, for all the jabs he's made at his lover's looks, he still thinks she is lovely. In fact, though he's made her sound common, his mistress seems "rare" to him. He even hints that the hyperbolic praise of women that is usually found in sonnets (such as "Sonnet 18", perhaps?) is a "false compare" -- an exaggeration or even a lie. Ultimately, it seems the speaker knows there is something beyond physical beauty that makes him prize his mistress. And isn't that what true love is all about?