Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our "How to Read a Poem" section for a glossary of terms.
The Mistress
She's definitely the star of this show. Every line refers to her, whether it's describing her appearance or her smell or the way she walks. We learn a few things about her, like the color of her hair and her skin. In general, though, she's a little more like an idea than a real person. Instead of being a fully drawn character like
Hamlet or
Juliet, she is mostly here to give the poet a chance to poke fun at exaggerated love poetry. We hear a lot about her, but for the most part, the information is rather vague and negative. Since all the images and symbols in this poem concern her in one way or another, we're going to put the different parts of her under the microscope, just like Shakespeare does.
Her Eyes
Eyes are something we focus on in other people, so it's no surprise that they are always cropping up in love poetry. You know the old saying, "The eyes are the windows of the soul"? Well, that's just the kind of frequently used phrase that our speaker doesn't have much time for.
- Line 1: We start out with the speaker refusing to compare his lover's eyes to the sun. He picks a really out-there, exaggerated simile so that we can see just how silly this kind of comparison can be. So really, this is a negative simile: "x is not like y."
Her Lips
Lips seem to be among the standard list of things you're supposed to notice in a beautiful woman. Think about a gorgeous movie star, for example. When she has a close-up in a particular scene, the camera tends to focus on her skin, her hair, her eyes, her breasts – all the things that Shakespeare includes here. The idea of breaking a woman into parts in order to praise her beauty has a really long history
- Line 2: Comparing lips to red coral gives us another slightly ridiculous over-the-top simile. Lips that red would have to be painted, and that's the kind of fake beauty that this poem is pushing back against.
Her Breasts
For obvious reasons, breasts are a classic symbol of female beauty. We'll keep this G-rated, but you can see why talking about this woman's breasts forces us to think about how we define an ideal woman, and what seems beautiful about her.
- Line 3: Here the speaker avoids a direct simile. He just gives us the strong image of sparkling white snow, and lays it next to the equally strong image of dun (grayish-brown) breasts. He's playing with our associations with these colors. White is a long-standing symbol of purity, cleanliness, virginity, and all that Next to that squeaky clean image, the mistress's breasts seem dirty and polluted. But the speaker will go on to show us that these old stereotypes might not really mean much at all.
Her Hair
Another major cliché about women's beauty is that their hair should be silky smooth and shiny. Shakespeare turn this assumption on its head in a big way in this poem. Readers in Shakespeare's time would have recognized all these worn-out comparisons as allusions to images in other love poems. Famous examples of traditional love sonnets include the poems of Petrarch, an Italian poet from the 14th century.
- Line 4: We think this image of hair as black wires sprouting out of her head is meant to gross you out a little bit. Sounds like a creepy doll, like Shakespeare meets the Bride of Chucky.
Her Cheeks
If the ideal woman in Shakespeare's time was supposed to have skin as white as snow and smooth and blond hair, then her cheeks are probably going to have to be pink and rosy too. You've probably picked up the pattern by now. The more clichés the speaker piles on, the more we see what a silly way this is to compliment someone.
- Line 6: The speaker takes the standard image of rosy cheeks a step further here, pretending to be surprised that there aren't actually red and white roses in this woman's cheeks. When you put it like that, it makes the whole metaphor (i.e. "her cheeks are roses") sound pretty dumb.
Her Breath
Faults such as your hair not being just right, or your eyes being the wrong color, might be easy to overlook; but bad breath, that's something else altogether. Shakespeare seems to be having fun here, pushing his gross-out portrait as far as it will go.
- Line 8: The word "reeks" brings up a really strong image of just how far from perfect this woman is. By hitting us over the head with her very human flaws, the speaker forces us to take a look at our definitions of female beauty. Just like the "black wires" (line 4), this line pushes our boundaries a little, turning the love poem into a criticism, but a pretty fun one.
Her Voice
Just a couple more things to round out the list. She should of course have a beautiful voice to go with all the rest of it. Or maybe not…
- Lines 9-10: As always, the speaker rejects the obvious simile ("her voice is like music"), but this time he's being a little nicer. He doesn't say, "She sounds like a frog with laryngitis." In fact, he goes out of his way to say that he loves the sound of her voice. He just thinks that comparing her voice to music is going too far.
The Way She Moves…
Of course this perfect woman that the speaker is taking apart would have to be as graceful as an angel too. Throughout the poem he's been setting up two portraits, side by side. One is of an ideal fantasy woman that he can't begin to believe in, and the other is of the real, imperfect woman he loves. In these last lines the speaker chooses the real woman over the goddess that he has never even seen.
- Line 11: We want to take a second to dork out about the alliteration in this line. Check out the way those three "g" words: "grant…goddess…go" make the line float along as gracefully as a goddess. Fun, huh? Plus, comparing a normal woman to a goddess is a complete exaggeration (or hyperbole as we English literature folks like to say), and that's exactly what this poem is trying to get us away from.
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