A Commentary on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130

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My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
        Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
       If snow be while ,why then her breasts are sun;
       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.

     To appreiciate the poem in question, we must first of all understand a literary sub-genre known as blason. According to Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the blason flurished in the Middle Ages. As a literary type, it is devoted to the praise or blame of almost anything. This genre further branches off into two parts: satiric blason and descriptive blason. It owes its name to the fact that some of its early practitioners thought that it represented an effort to do in poetry what heraldic art did with armorial bearings. The satiric blason has its origin from Latin satire and the descrpitive blason from Greek epigram. According to one practitioner, Sebillet, the good blason must be brief, of eight to ten syllable verses and have a sharp conclusion. Most blasons celebrated some part of the female body and in 1550 an anthology of blasons was produced and entitled Blasons du Corps Feminin.
     As an example of it, here is a poem by Thomas Watson, a sixteenth century poet:   
           

Harke you that list to heare what sainte I serve:
           Her yellowe lockes exceede the beaten goulde;
           Her sparkeling eies in heav’n a place deserve;
           Her forehead hight and faire of comely moulde;
           Her words are musicke all of silver sounde;
           Her wit so sharpe as like can scarece be found;
           Each eybrowe hanges like Iris in the skies;
           Her eagles nose is straight of stately frame;
           On either cheeke a Rose and Lillie lies;
           Her breath is sweete perfume, or hollie flame;
           Her lips more red than any corall stone;
           Her necke more white, then ages swans yt mone;
           Her brest transparent is , like christall rocke;
           Her fingers long ,fit for Apolloes Lute;
           Her slipper such as Momus dare not mocke;
           Her vertues all so great as make me mute:
           What other partes she hath I neede not say,
           Whose face alone is cause of my decaye.

     The poem opens by exalting the lady the poet adores to sainthood, a commonplace Renaissance practice , believed to be popularized by Sir Philip Sidney. But it could also be seen as a far and distant echo from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, where the elfin knight goes through various hardships and quests for his lady” upon a lowly Asse more white then snow.” The poem then enumerates all the charms of the lady with her features, nay, even all her body, and her virtue and wit all described with extravagant figures of speech. The poem is written in a simple, graceful way and is delightful to read--- but only for a few times ; such poems, when written popularly and produced in large quantity, will surely prove stale and backfire on readers’ taste.
     With this background in mind, we can now turn to the sonnet and understand that it is a deliberate act of revolt against the tradition and is therefore anti-blason.
     On the other hand, the poem also falls under the heading of parody. By parody is meant a literary work that imitates its predecessor. Its motive is quite complex. As its entry from Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is extremely well written and pertinent, I will quote it in some detail:
    Parody is as old as poetry itself. One fundamental distinction can be made between comic parody, which is close to burlesque and literary or critical parody ,which follows more closely a given author’s style or a particular work of art. In the broadder sense parody and literary burlesuqe originated in classic drama where they expressed a basic impusle for emotional counterpoint to tragic themes. From Aristophanes to Shakespeare and into our time the comic interlude, with its ludicrous parallel of the main plot, has functioned as a parody—to provide a breather or the catharsis of laughter. It is, therefore, somewhat beside the point to regard all parody with suspicion or distrust. For, although a parasitic art and written a times with malice ,parody is as fundamental to literature as is laughter to health.
    Critical parody has been defined as the exagerated imitation of a work of art. Like caricature it is based on distortion ,bringing into bolder relief the salient features of a writer’s style or habit of mind. It belongs to the genus satire and thus performs the double-edged task of reform and ridicule.Eccentricity, sentimentalism, pedantry, dullness, pompousness, and self-importance are among its major targets, and at its best it is a critical instrument of telling force because it approaches the subject from within rather than from without, and thus avoids the repoach of poets and creative writers that a critic is simply a disappointed artist. Parody usually makes its point by employing a serious style to express an incongruous subject, thus disturbing the balance of form and matter. It keeps attention focused on the poem imitated with, in most cases , a deflationary intent.  
    Clearly, this poem belongs to the latter category and in fact, is a reply-poem to another poet’s blason:
         

My mistress’ eyes are brilliant as the sun,
          And coral’s colour matches her lips’ red;
          Her snowy breasts are like to others none,
          And golden wires ornament her head.
          A bed of damask roses ,red and white,
          I find within the confines of her cheeks,
          And perfume’s self , conferring all delight,
          Breathes in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
          I love to hear her speak, and well I know
          That only music hath such pleasing sound;
          In walking she doth like a goddess go,
          Her dainty feet scarce printing on the ground.
          In all , by heaven I think my love as rare
          As any she conceived for compare.

     Following the tradition of the blason, the poet here lavishes all kinds of descriptions on the object of his adornment. Instead of saying that the lady breathes, the poet says in personification that “ perfume’s self , breathes in the breath that from my mistress reeks.” The word reek now has an unpleasant connotation; but in shakespeare’s times , according to the Oxford Dictionary, it means “ of smoke, vapour,etc.. be emitted or exhaled ,rise ,emanate.” Its unpleasant late  cousin, as recorded by the Oxford Dictionary, appeared in 1710 and the example given is Swift’s Journal to Stella: I was forced to go to a blind chop-house,...and then go reeking from thence to the First Minister of State. Of course, as modern readers, we could read the later meaning into Shakespeare’s version ,thus gaining a different dimension of appreciation.
      And about the word wire, the Oxford Dicitonary gives the following explanation: of precious metal, esp. gold, used chiefly in ornamentation. From the 13th to the 16th century golden hair was frequently poetically likened to gold wire. But again , read by the modern readers, this meaning is more likely to be the unpleasant association with metal or fencing wire, thus making the description in Shakespeare’s version a bit more repulsive.
      So with this poem here for comparison, Shakespeare’s sonnet could be seen as a point-by-point refutation and contains a deliberate realism. Instead of like the sun, the eyes of shakespeare’s lady are nothing like that; instead of exactly like coral, her lips’ red is far less than it; instead of golden wires , black wires grow on her head; instead of the platitudinous “roses blooming on her cheeks”, he sees no roses there. Her breath is unpleasant, her voice is far less pleasing than music and as to the way she walks, she just treads---with more emphasis on the vigorous and ,therefore , less elegant movement of her gait. All in all, all the charms are perversely denigrated and so to speak , vandalized. The deliberateness could be perceived in the third line ,where the words “why then” find their place. In it we could” hear” Shakespeare’s own voice in the moment of his ready retortion. Although in this fourteen line poem, twelve of them are devoted to refutation, the last two lines, or known as the “turn” in the sonnet as the poetic form, remain as almost they were with only the change of one word and the addition of another word false. By appropriating and pressing into service the last two lines and substituting the word conceived with belied, the two last lines at the end of the poem gain much more emphasis and direct the reader’s attention to the word belied, thus exposing the false beauty in the human world and the genre blason as well.
     The poem is written mostly in iambi with exceptions of secondary accents , spondees or trochees occouring on important words so as to emphasize them as in the cases of coral, why then,black wires grow on, see I in, than in,treads on.  

Works Cited:
Vendler ,Helen .The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. London:the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.
Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New York: Chelsea House Publishers,1987.
Prenubger,Alex. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1974.