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 …
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we begin, controversially, with a poem written by a man about his mistress – and, to boot, a poem that has often been read as misogynistic. In this sonnet, Shakespeare downplays the physical attributes of the ‘Dark Lady’ who shares his bed – but in a deliberate rhetoric move,to reject the false conventions of much love poetry. He concludes by arguing that he thinks the woman he loves is ‘as rare / As any [woman] belied with false compare’, i.e. any woman whose objective beauty has been overpraised by a male poet.
How we respond to the poem will probably come as much from our own convictions on these issues as it will from the poem itself. Do we think that by merely rejecting such hyperbole, Shakespeare is doing down his mistress? ‘Nothing like the sun’ may sound rather churlish and strong (‘Oh, don’t be silly, her eyes are nowhere near as marvellous as the sun!’), but then it doesn’t necessarily mean that her eyes are positively hideous to behold …