Theme: The Dark Lady
Content: The first sonnet of a series centred on the "dark lady", or more accurately a negro lady who has a "black" complexion, that has more genuine beauty than "fair" women who use cosmetics to try to make themselves look beautiful.
In the old age black
was not counted
fair,
Or if it were, it
bore
not
beauty's
name;
But now
is black, beauty's
successive heir,
And beauty
slandered with a bastard
shame:
- Pun on the meaning of fair: fair meaning "beautiful" as opposed to the opposite of black.
- beauty is everywhere in this sonnet: all the quatrains and the couplet.
- The alliteration of b words echoes the 2 key words of black and beauty while But more closely echoes beauty.
- The alliteration of or words (explicitly and embedded in words like born) anticipates the later mourning.
- no gains prominence via not...not...now...no...no...not...not...no and is echoed via assonance in words such as borrowed.
- The theme of heir was prominent in Sonnets 1-17 which encouraged the beautiful Young Man to produce a heir, e.g. Sonnet 1's "His tender heir might bear his memory". This sonnet now claims black as the heir of beauty which is reinforced by this sonnet being the first to the Dark Lady immediately following the last to the Young Man. Further evidence of intelligent planning in the sequencing of the sonnets.
- Possible pun on black beauty being a her and a heir, like Sir John Oldcastle's pun on heir in 1H4: "Yea, and so used it that were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent".
For
since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul
with art's false
borrowed
face,
Sweet beauty
hath no name,
no
holy bower,
But is profaned,
if not lives
in disgrace.
- Abundant f alliteration in Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face.
- not beauty's name of Q1 now becomes no name.
- each hand hath put on nature's power refers to cosmetics that allow women who are not beautiful to fair the foul.
Therefore
my mistress' eyes are raven-black,
Her brow
so suited, and they mourners
seem
At such who, not
born
fair,
no
beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem.
- black rhymes and morphs into beauty lack.
- Explicit declaration by the author that the black lady is his mistress.
Yet so they mourn,
becoming
of their woe,
That every tongue
says beauty should look so.
- In Q1, black was not counted fair in the old age. Now, every tongue says beauty should look so.
- fair is present in each quatrain but is absent from the couplet where black has finally taken over as beauty.
Compare Sir Philip Sidney's Sonnet VII from Astrophel and Stella:
When nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In colour black, why wrapped she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black like painter wise,
Frame daintiest luster mixed with shadows light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object best, to strength and knit our sight:
Lest if no veil these brave beams did disguise,
They sun-like would more dazzle than delight.
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That whereas black seams beauty's contrary,
She even in black doth make all beauties flow:
But so and thus, she minding love should be
Placed ever there, gave him his mourning weed:
To honour all their deaths, who for her bleed.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net