English Wordplay ~ Listen and Enjoy
Sonnet 130
Acting notes from Playing Shakespeare by John Barton: this sonnet is built upon surprises in the images used by the speaker. The reading needs a fine balance between textual relish and a personal humanity. All questions of handling Shakespeare's text are to do with balances between various extremes; in this case an excess of textual relish on the one hand or an excess of naturalistic throw-away on the other.
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Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess: She was very dark, in a period when to be dark was unfashionable, but the poet glories in her darkness…. Will looks at his mistress with eyes clearer than is proper for a lover.
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. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go,-- My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.