Sonnet 127: In the Old Age Black Was Not Counted Fair
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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. 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. Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black, Her brows so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Slandering creation with a false esteem. Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so. |
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In the old age black was not counted fair
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name |
In the past, black was not considered beautiful.
The prosaic sounding simple and compacted translation of the opening two lines of this sonnet does not of course do justice to the wordplay and complex juxtaposition contained in Shakespeare's verse. Because its compositional wit lies in the contrast between black, which is also dark and therefore the opposite of fair, which is also beautiful and therefore the opposite of ugly. And so if black was counted or considered 'fair' as in 'light' of shade, it still did not bear the name of beauty, in other words, it was still not considered beautiful, or conversely, if something that was black was regarded as aesthetically pleasing and therefore beautiful, it did not carry the name given to beauty in the language of the day, which is 'fair'. The expression 'the old age', meanwhile, evokes a golden age of antiquity, but it has been pointed out that Shakespeare may encompass in this also a much more recent past, one that he himself may have experienced, before it became fashionable, relatively recently, to use thick makeup or 'false painting', as he calls it in Sonnet 67, to create an artificial appearance of what he therefore considers to be fake beauty. And this notion of an artifice that is therefore false is very shortly to make an appearance in this sonnet too. |
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But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame. |
Now, however, as in 'these days', black has been elevated to be beauty's successor, meaning it is treated as if it were the rightful heir to beauty and therefore of the same status and standing, while beauty itself is being given a bad name, because, as the following quatrain is about to explain, it is no longer recognised and respected for what it is: genuine, and therefore, as is the suggestion, also in a sense pure.
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For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face, |
Because since that time lately when it has been the case that everyone can assume or presume the power that rightfully belongs to nature and make that which is ugly supposedly 'beautiful' with the artifice of cosmetics, resulting in effectively a borrowed face, as this kind of beauty disappears as soon as the makeup wears off...
The disdain Shakespeare has for the kind of heavy white makeup that became fashionable for both men and women during the 1590s and the fake appearance it gave is something we are very familiar with from several previous poems, among them Sonnets 20, 21, 67, and indirectly or metaphorically also 82 and 83: it is one of several themes that connect the Fair Youth section of the sonnets strongly to the Dark Lady section. |
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Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. |
...because of this, because everyone can make themselves supposedly 'beautiful' with makeup, genuine beauty now has no name of its own – if we call everything, even these artificial looks 'beautiful', then that deprives real, natural beauty of a meaningful word to describe it – and it has no place where it is held sacred and revered for what it is, but instead it is being turned into a profane, secular, trivial matter, if not in fact disgraced.
In other words: in a time when the fake look that is achieved with heavy makeup is considered beautiful, real beauty is no longer recognised and valued and because the words that should be reserved for real beauty – such as 'fair' or 'beauty' – are now being applied to these faces and appearances that are made artificially beautiful, they become meaningless, while actual, real beauty is being ignored or even ridiculed, possibly as 'old fashioned' or 'primitive' or 'plain', or one might even go as far as saying that it is being forced to live in disgrace, because it no longer receives the respect and due regard it by right deserves. There is in this, you could argue, a fascinating parallel to today, where the current concept or 'ideal of beauty' prompts both men and women to 'enhance' their appearance with heavy injections or implants, to achieve a look that only a few years ago would by many people have been considered positively preposterous. But beauty is and will always be, of course, always mostly in the eye of the beholder... |
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Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her brows so suited, and they mourners seem, |
And it is because of this that the eyes of my mistress are as black as ravens, as are her eyebrows or her hair, and with their pitch black appearance they seem like the mourners of a funeral congregation...
How exactly we should understand the 'Therefore' here is not entirely obvious, because it doesn't strictly make sense. The mistress cannot choose or – in Shakespeare's day, at any rate – change the colour of her eyes, and so she has no agency in this. A poetic conceit that the eyes have an awareness of what is the fashion of the day and thus turn themselves into the blackest black they can achieve is possible but feels a little far-fetched. A simple but also therefore simplistic reading might suggest that Shakespeare has chosen his mistress for the reasons outlined above, but that is also not satisfactory. If, however, we allow 'Therefore' to relate not immediately to 'my mistress' eyes' being black, but to them seeming mourners, then it immediately makes sense: the line then means: Therefore the eyes of my mistress, which are raven black, seem like mourners... Interestingly, the Quarto Edition here repeats 'eyes' and reads: Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem, Katherine Duncan-Jones in her Arden edition of the Sonnets is one of few editors who retain and defend this as it stands: "Though the overwhelming majority of editors have felt the repetition of eyes to be an error, and have either emended the eyes of the previous lines or these ones, to introduce an allusion to some other part of the mistress's appearance, Q's text makes perfectly good sense. The speaker's mistress's eyes are, in respect of their blackness (so) well matched both to the present age and to each other." And this is one of the rare instances where I – somewhat reluctantly – tend to agree with those who see a need for emending the Quarto. I err, as you will know if you have been following this podcast, very much on the side of caution when it comes to 'correcting' Shakespeare, and my default stance is to assume that Shakespeare knows what he is going and that the Quarto should as far as possible be honoured. Here though Katherine Duncan-Jones's reading does not convince me. The sonnet is composed in a typical 'octave' and 'sestet' construction, where the octave – the first eight lines consisting of the first two quatrains – lays out the argument with the situation as it is, and the sestet – consisting of the last quatrain and the closing couplet – presents the consequence of this situation and the resolution of the argument. These two first lines of the sestet and third quatrain thus initiate the second part of the argument and it would be strange and awkward for a proficient poet like Shakespeare to reference so covertly the circumstances explicated above. Plus, there has hardly ever been any need for anyone to point out that a pair of eyes are suited to each other and there is no good reason why Shakespeare should want to do so here. Whereas if 'brows' or 'hairs' are substituted for 'eyes' in the second line, the sentence makes perfect sense without interpretational acrobatics: this additional feature of hers, which goes hand in hand with her eyes, is suited to the appearance of her eyes, as we would expect, and in this constellation these eyes and/or brows then seem like mourners. Whether we emend to 'brows' or 'hairs' is mostly then a matter of taste, but since the eyebrows sit right above the eyes and form part of the facial expression, it seems most likely to me that if there is an emendation to be made, it should be to 'brows', not least because they may also evoke somewhat the type of heavy brimmed hat or cloak or hood worn by mourners at a funeral in the rain or the cold, at the time. |
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At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem. |
And the mourning these eyes or eyes and eyebrows seem to be doing is for those people who, while they were not born naturally beautiful, do not lack anything when it comes to this artificial or cosmetic beauty, and who with this supposed beauty of theirs give creation, for which read nature, a bad name, because they are considered 'beautiful' by other people in what is only a false or misguided and therefore unjustified esteem that they are being honoured with.
There is a possible double meaning here, because the line can also be read as saying: these eyes or possibly eyes and eyebrows mourn for those who, even though they were not born with fair, as in light coloured, blonde hair and matching blue eyes and light-coloured eyebrows and a pale skin – as was very much the ideal of beauty at the time – still do not actually lack any beauty, in other words they are in themselves genuinely beautiful too, and so my mistress' eyes themselves are in a sense 'slandering', as would be the general perception or popular view at the time, creation with a supposedly false high esteem of themselves. Whether or not Shakespeare means this additional reading to also be taken into account we don't know, of course, but the whole sonnet is so ambiguous that we cannot dismiss it as a direct possibility. |
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Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so. |
And yet so much or in such a way they mourn, and they so inhabit their pain or sadness in a way that becomes them, meaning it suits them and makes them look good, that everybody now agrees that this is exactly what beauty should look like. Thus effectively responding to the opening line by saying:
Now, everyone says black is beautiful. |
Sonnet 127 is the first of 26 poems in the 1609 collection which together are generally known as the Dark Lady Sonnets. While William Shakespeare himself never uses the expression 'Dark Lady' any more than he uses the term 'Fair Youth' in these sonnets, it is entirely clear from this poem onwards that this much shorter section concerns itself with a woman who has dark hair, dark eyes, and a complexion that is most likely tan or olive, as opposed to pale.
The sonnet sets a tone that is ambiguous, somewhat distanced, perhaps slightly ironic, perhaps also quite sincere, but neither of these in an obvious, let alone straightforward way, and it establishes from the outset that the person our poet is now talking about is his 'mistress', and that she does not fit the hitherto or until recently accepted ideal of beauty. In fact, she represents, so the sonnet tells us, the exact opposite of what used to be considered beautiful, but although Shakespeare does not exactly sound overjoyed at her kind of beauty being recognised, he still values this genuine, natural beauty above the cosmetic artifice that apparently has now become the fashion.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this curiously complex poem is this odd type of ambiguity: Is our Will happy that he has a beautiful mistress of whom everyone now says she is beautiful, or does he hanker after a golden age when fair was fair, foul was foul, dun was dun, and black was none of the above?
This is the first but not the only poem that makes a point of highlighting this woman's appearance, the most famous being Sonnet 130 My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun. That sonnet is positively unflattering in its depiction of her, but then in the closing couplet appears to fully embrace her as she is, whereas here we don't sense that we know exactly what Shakespeare is saying, less still what his feelings are towards his mistress.
This can scarcely be an accident. Current scholarly opinion mostly assumes that these Dark Lady Sonnets were written in the early phase of Shakespeare's sonneteering, and, as we have mentioned previously and will examine in greater detail as we go along, there are good indications that they directly overlap with some of the Fair Youth Sonnets. If that is the case, and considering everything we have learnt from the Fair Youth Sonnets, then this relationship with a woman – which with this sonnet may or may not be in its early stages, but its placing in the collection suggests that it is – would be taking shape concurrently with Shakespeare's evident and much expressed love for his young man, who we have good reason to believe is not only 'fair' in the sense of beautiful, but also really light-skinned with blonde or strawberry blonde hair and light pigmented eyes. This woman would, in other words, be as stark a contrast to the young man for William Shakespeare as she is for us, even without the labels 'Fair Youth' and 'Dark Lady' being applied.
Then again, not only can we not know who this Dark Lady is, we cannot even know for certain, certainly not from this sonnet, that there is such a person. Better and more emphatic pointers will come our way though, and since Shakespeare is talking to us about his 'mistress', our first instinct should certainly be to believe him and assume that he has a mistress and that this sonnet is about her.
What muddies the waters a bit is the fact that this mistress does bear something of a poetic resemblance to the Stella of Sir Philip Sidney's famous collection Astrophel and Stella. His Sonnet 7 goes:
When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In colour black, why wrapt she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mixed of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object best to knit and strength our sight;
Lest, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That, whereas black seems beauty's contrary,
She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
Both so, and thus, she, minding Love should be
Placed ever there, gave him this mourning weed
To honour all their deaths who for her bleed.
Sidney's sonnets were published in 1591, five years after his death, but as was quite normal then, many of his poems circulated before they were published in manuscript form, and so it is certainly possible, though by no means certain, that Shakespeare knew or had heard or read this sonnet and was inspired by its juxtaposition of black versus fair, and of the analogy to mourning.
This does not, I should stress, greatly diminish, let alone preclude, the possibility of Shakespeare writing about a real person in his own life: there would have been any number of women to whom the same attributes applied, and so the similarities, such as they are, most likely mostly inform his style, rather than causing him to invent a mistress, just like Stella.
This fairly generic, albeit ambiguous, and as yet fairly uninvolved tone paired with a possible inspiration from Sidney, supports the sonnet's position in the collection as the first one Shakespeare composed about his mistress: it really only tells us that she exists – certainly in his consciousness, very possibly in his life – and that in a world of fake beauty she, who does not adhere to the classical ideal of beauty, is indeed beautiful, and that not just to him, the beholder, but to 'every tongue', to everyone who speaks of her, which in itself suggests that people do speak about her: that she, too, like the young man in Shakespeare's life, is to some extent visible and being noticed. And that, as we have seen before and as we shall see again, can be both a good thing or a bad thing...
The sonnet sets a tone that is ambiguous, somewhat distanced, perhaps slightly ironic, perhaps also quite sincere, but neither of these in an obvious, let alone straightforward way, and it establishes from the outset that the person our poet is now talking about is his 'mistress', and that she does not fit the hitherto or until recently accepted ideal of beauty. In fact, she represents, so the sonnet tells us, the exact opposite of what used to be considered beautiful, but although Shakespeare does not exactly sound overjoyed at her kind of beauty being recognised, he still values this genuine, natural beauty above the cosmetic artifice that apparently has now become the fashion.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this curiously complex poem is this odd type of ambiguity: Is our Will happy that he has a beautiful mistress of whom everyone now says she is beautiful, or does he hanker after a golden age when fair was fair, foul was foul, dun was dun, and black was none of the above?
This is the first but not the only poem that makes a point of highlighting this woman's appearance, the most famous being Sonnet 130 My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun. That sonnet is positively unflattering in its depiction of her, but then in the closing couplet appears to fully embrace her as she is, whereas here we don't sense that we know exactly what Shakespeare is saying, less still what his feelings are towards his mistress.
This can scarcely be an accident. Current scholarly opinion mostly assumes that these Dark Lady Sonnets were written in the early phase of Shakespeare's sonneteering, and, as we have mentioned previously and will examine in greater detail as we go along, there are good indications that they directly overlap with some of the Fair Youth Sonnets. If that is the case, and considering everything we have learnt from the Fair Youth Sonnets, then this relationship with a woman – which with this sonnet may or may not be in its early stages, but its placing in the collection suggests that it is – would be taking shape concurrently with Shakespeare's evident and much expressed love for his young man, who we have good reason to believe is not only 'fair' in the sense of beautiful, but also really light-skinned with blonde or strawberry blonde hair and light pigmented eyes. This woman would, in other words, be as stark a contrast to the young man for William Shakespeare as she is for us, even without the labels 'Fair Youth' and 'Dark Lady' being applied.
Then again, not only can we not know who this Dark Lady is, we cannot even know for certain, certainly not from this sonnet, that there is such a person. Better and more emphatic pointers will come our way though, and since Shakespeare is talking to us about his 'mistress', our first instinct should certainly be to believe him and assume that he has a mistress and that this sonnet is about her.
What muddies the waters a bit is the fact that this mistress does bear something of a poetic resemblance to the Stella of Sir Philip Sidney's famous collection Astrophel and Stella. His Sonnet 7 goes:
When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In colour black, why wrapt she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mixed of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object best to knit and strength our sight;
Lest, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That, whereas black seems beauty's contrary,
She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
Both so, and thus, she, minding Love should be
Placed ever there, gave him this mourning weed
To honour all their deaths who for her bleed.
Sidney's sonnets were published in 1591, five years after his death, but as was quite normal then, many of his poems circulated before they were published in manuscript form, and so it is certainly possible, though by no means certain, that Shakespeare knew or had heard or read this sonnet and was inspired by its juxtaposition of black versus fair, and of the analogy to mourning.
This does not, I should stress, greatly diminish, let alone preclude, the possibility of Shakespeare writing about a real person in his own life: there would have been any number of women to whom the same attributes applied, and so the similarities, such as they are, most likely mostly inform his style, rather than causing him to invent a mistress, just like Stella.
This fairly generic, albeit ambiguous, and as yet fairly uninvolved tone paired with a possible inspiration from Sidney, supports the sonnet's position in the collection as the first one Shakespeare composed about his mistress: it really only tells us that she exists – certainly in his consciousness, very possibly in his life – and that in a world of fake beauty she, who does not adhere to the classical ideal of beauty, is indeed beautiful, and that not just to him, the beholder, but to 'every tongue', to everyone who speaks of her, which in itself suggests that people do speak about her: that she, too, like the young man in Shakespeare's life, is to some extent visible and being noticed. And that, as we have seen before and as we shall see again, can be both a good thing or a bad thing...
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If you spot a mistake or if you have any comments or suggestions, please use the contact page to get in touch.
To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!