legal term meaning the settlement of an obligation, is
to “render” the young man (l. 14). Render is a fl uid
word: In culinary terms it means to melt fat, to turn
something solid into something liquid, as will happen
when a corpse decays. The word also has legal and
commercial associations: To render what is due is to
pay what one owes. The young man must render him-
self to Nature, and Nature must render the death he is
owed. Another young man who imagines making a
“quietus” with Nature is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who
proposes to do so “with a bare bodkin” as he debates
the merits of suicide in his “To be or not to be” solilo-
quy (Hamlet, 3.2.55–87).
Something is missing from the end of Sonnet 126:
Obviously, there is no closing couplet. In the 1609 edi-
tion, and in some modern editions, there are two sets
of parentheses at the end of the poem to indicate the
absence. But something seems to be missing in a gram-
matical sense as well: The verb render is often transitive
(one that takes an object), and here it seems to have no
object. However, the empty lines indicated by the
parentheses, like the incomplete relationship the fi rst
126 sonnets document, signify nothing, and the poem’s
fi nal sentence can be read bleakly: “And her quietus is
to render thee / Nothing / Nothing.” The sonnet repli-
cates the relationship’s unhappy ending: There is no
further coupling among the lines of poetry or between
the men who are their subject. By leaving the sonnet
unfi nished, the poet leaves open the possibility of a
different, more satisfying ending, but also, more sadly,
implies that there is really nothing left to say.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
FURTHER READING
Graves, Roy Neil. “Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 126.’ ” Explicator
54, no. 4 (1996): 203–207.
Catherine Loomis
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 127 (“In the old
age black was not counted fair”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) This and the next few SONNETs
in WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s SONNET SEQUENCE comment
on the early modern concept of female beauty and how
the speaker views his mistress, or female beloved, who
possesses a different type of beauty. The accepted stan-
dard of female beauty for early modern women was
blond hair, blue eyes, fair (almost white) complexion,
pink or red cheeks, and red lips. Many sonnets by
poets such as SIR PHILIP SIDNEY describe beloveds who
possess these particular qualities. Shakespeare’s son-
nets celebrate a beloved who does not adhere to early
modern notions of beauty, so they are sometimes
referred to as the DARK LADY sonnets, even though the
beloved is never actually identifi ed as a “lady.”
The speaker begins by indicating that long ago (“in
the old age,” l. 1) “black” was not counted fair. How-
ever, the Song of Songs in the Bible celebrates black
beauty, so the idea does have precedent, and some
scholars have even posited that the woman in question
was African or at least a darker European. The fi rst qua-
train argues that if there were those who considered
black to be “fair”—and there is a pun here between “fair”
as good-looking or attractive and “fair” as pale—they
did not consider it to be “beautiful.” Now, however,
black is the heir of “fair” and takes over, while beauty as
“fairness” is “slandered with a bastard shame” (l. 4). Bas-
tards, or illegitimate children born out of legal wedlock,
cannot be heirs and inherit property. “Fairness” becomes
slandered with the shame of bastardy through the use of
cosmetics that unnaturally make skin whiter and cheeks
and lips redder. (Interestingly, these cosmetics were
made of white and red lead, which destroyed the skin.)
Thus, black becomes “beautiful” primarily because fair
is adulterated, no longer pure or honest.
The second quatrain continues the examination of
false beauty, especially in terms of women cheating men
by using cosmetics to make them artifi cially beautiful.
Women’s hands have taken over Nature’s power to cre-
ate a beautiful face by using cosmetics. This kind of alter-
ation means that a fair woman’s beauty can no longer be
trusted. The hand that wields cosmetics can very well
have made a “foul”—or ugly—face “fair” with the bor-
rowed skills of “art,” here meaning artifi ce, or falseness.
Thus, beauty has lost its “reputation” (name) through the
unnatural creation of “beautiful” women from ones who
are truly ugly. Beauty is no longer holy; it is “profaned,”
or violated, and “lives in disgrace” (ll. 7–8).
The speaker then reminds us that the sonnet’s female
subject has eyes that are “raven-black” (l. 9) and eye-
brows to match. While such features would previouslySHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 127 391