The three QUATRAINs of Sonnet 130 focus on what
the speaker’s mistress is not. In the fi rst quatrain we
learn that her eyes are “nothing like the sun” (l. 1).
While women’s eyes were ideally blue, it was more
important that they shone like the sun. Sea coral is “far
more red” (l. 2) than her lips. While a woman’s com-
plexion should be as fair and as white as snow, the
speaker’s beloved’s breasts are “dun” (l. 3), a grayish
tan color. While it would be ideal for the woman to
have hair like thin, spun golden wire, the speaker’s
mistress seems to have black wires growing out of her
head. The fact that her hair is described as being black
and wiry and her skin as dun has suggested to some
critics that the mistress might be an African.
In the second quatrain, the speaker describes beau-
tiful damask roses. This kind of rose has petals that are
both red and white. Likening a woman’s cheek to dam-
ask roses would be fl attering because it would suggest
that the woman’s skin is white and her cheeks are red.
Unfortunately, though, the speaker has seen “no such
roses” (l. 6)—that is, none of this lovely color—in the
mistress’s cheeks. During the early modern period,
dental hygiene and dental care was not very advanced.
People brushed their teeth—if they even bothered to
do so—with twigs whose ends were chewed to make
something like bristles, or they wiped them with a
tooth cloth. There was no way to fi ll teeth that had
cavities, so they either were pulled or, worse, just rot-
ted out. Unfortunately, the speaker’s mistress may have
been a victim of these dental limitations, because her
breath “reeks” (l. 8). It is so foul that perfume smells
much better.
Women were also expected to be very graceful and
soft-spoken. While the speaker loves to hear the mis-
tress speak, her voice must not sound very sweet—
“music hath a far more pleasing sound” (l. 10). And
though her walk should be graceful, making her glide
softly over the ground as though she were a goddess,
the mistress actually “treads on the ground” (l. 12),
probably indicating that she is very heavy-footed and
clumps along. Yet while the mistress is clearly not a
stereotypical beauty, the speaker presents her unfl at-
tering features in a calm, straightforward way. He does
not actually say that she is plain or ugly, just that she is
completely unlike the cultural ideal of beauty. Even
though the speaker tells us all the ways in which the
mistress fails to live up to conventional ideals of beauty,
he does not seem to be bothered by this. The fact that
the speaker makes no value judgment about the mis-
tress’s looks, and the fact that she is referred to as “my
love” (l. 13) reinforces the speaker’s opinion that she is
“rare” and unusual, though in a very special way, in
her difference from the standard run of “beauties.”
See also DARK LADY; SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKE-
SPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Theodora A. JankowskiShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 138 (“When my
love swears that she is made for truth”) WIL-
LIAM SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 138 is unique
among WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s SONNETs in that, like
number 144, it exists in two moderately different
forms: the 1599 collection The Passionate Pilgrim and
the 1609 Quarto edition of 154 sonnets. There is criti-
cal disagreement about the nature of the 1599 version
of Sonnet 138. Some believe it is an inferior, early draft
later revised by Shakespeare for the 1609 edition, while
others claim it is a pirated, memorial reconstruction of
the poem, taken from early sonnet readings exchanged
informally with Shakespeare’s friends and colleagues.
In Sonnet 138, the speaker admits to his mistress’s
lies and infi delity, his knowledge of these transgres-
sions, his coexistent faith in her and disbelief of her
lies, and his culpability in sustaining such a relation-
ship. He brings up his age in relation to the younger
mistress and the fact that they both admit and deliber-
ately deny this difference in age. This coexistent belief
and distrust is contradictory, and yet it describes the
speaker’s emotional state.
The fi rst QUATRAIN introduces the sonnet’s main idea
that the mistress swears she speaks and behaves hon-
estly, and that the speaker believes her even though he
knows she lies (ll. 1–2). He then admits she must think
him naïve to accept her lies as truth (ll. 3–4). In the
second quatrain (ll. 5–8), the speaker, apparently anx-
ious about his age, notes that she believes he is young
(while in this very act admitting they both know this to
be false). He accepts her fl attering statements that sup-
port this lie, demonstrating a collusion wherein they394 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 138