Shakespeare's Dark Lady and a Little Botox

 As I mentioned in my last post, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. He addressed sonnets 1-126 to a young man, an idealized youth who has been labeled the “fair youth,” the object of the poet’s love. There have been many thoughts as to his identity, since the 1609 dedication to the sonnets is to a Mr. W. H., which has led to much speculation and research, but the real importance of the sonnets lay in the poems’ extraordinary linguistic play and intriguing themes. Sonnets 127-152 revolve around the “Dark Lady.” Unlike the idealized concepts of the “fair youth,” these sonnets about the Dark Lady, whose identity also remains a mystery, express a different dynamic, exploring such themes as genuine and false beauty, lust, infidelity, sexual jealousy and frustration. Sonnet 127 initiates this group and discusses the concept of female beauty in a nontraditional manner:

           Sonnet 127

In old days, 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 eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with false esteem.
  Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
  That every tongue says beauty should look so.

In the first three lines of this sonnet, the speaker suggests that the conventional Elizabethan standard of female beauty, fair skin and light hair, has changed. The dark complexion and dark eyes of his mistress are “beauty’s successive heir,” to the fair complexion and light blue eyes that once embodied ideal beauty. However, in the fourth line of quatrain 1 appears something that disturbs the speaker. As if changing the subject, the speaker begins to describe how beauty in general is being “slandered with a bastard shame,” being defamed by a different, illegitimate form of beauty. That illegitimate beauty is produced by women who use cosmetics, since even a “foul” woman can transform herself into an image of beauty with the application of the right make-up.

Now focused on this second subject, the speaker in quatrain 2, draws an image of women using cosmetics to beautify their faces: “For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, / Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face”. The speaker’s words are cutting. Foul looking women can counterfeit their appearance with false art. Beauty has lost its sacred sanctuary, its “holy bower,” since it may be pilfered from nature easily by any woman applying cosmetics. As a result, the ideal sanctity of beauty itself is “profaned, if not lives in disgrace.”

Quatrain 3 unites the two subjects, black as the new standard of beauty and the “evil” of using cosmetics to transform one’s face. His mistress’ eyes are beautiful since they “are raven black” but their darkness suggests sadness since they “seem” to mourn those who “not born fair.” Yet, those who apply cosmetics to lighten their skin, falsify their appearance and artificially beautify their faces, succeeding in a deceit: “not born fair no beauty lack.” In the end, the speaker’s mistress commands true admiration for her natural appearance. In effect, according to the speaker, those who cosmetically alter their looks are “sland’ring creation with false esteem.”

An Additional note about Shakespeare’s “interest” in true, female beauty and facial appearance in general:

In Shakespeare’s play, a comedy, (1598) Love’s Labor’s Lost, the King of Navarre and three of his lords agree to avoid any contact with women, eat only once a day, sleep only three hours a night, so they can devote themselves to a three-year period of uninterrupted, intense study. Of course, this scheme goes awry when the Princess of France and her attending ladies visit the King’s court. All of the men fall in love with the ladies and one of the King’s lords, Berowne, falls in love with the Princess’ lady Rosaline, who happens to have black hair and dark eyes. When Berowne’s passion is revealed to the King, a comic scene ensues in which the King and Berowne argue over Rosaline’s beauty. The similarity between Berowne’s words and Sonnet 127 is interesting and highlights the issue of true versus false beauty.” Both the sonnet and the play may have been composed in the same decade, during the 1590’s. Yet, as we know, their official publications come later.

Act 4, 3, 267-285
KING 
 By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
BEROWNE 
Is ebony like her? O word divine!
 A wife of such wood were felicity.
O, who can give an oath? Where is a book,
 That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack
If that she learn not of her eye to look?
 No face is fair that is not full so black.
KING 
O, paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
 The hue of dungeons and the school of night,
And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.
BEROWNE 
 Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked,
 It mourns that painting and usurping hair
Should ravish doters with a false aspect:
 And therefore is she born to make black fair.
Her favor turns the fashion of the days,
 For native blood is counted painting now.
And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,
 Paints itself black to imitate her brow. 

The parallels between the sonnet and Berowne’s speech compel comparison. As we read one, the words of the other echo in our ears. When the King states “By heaven, thy love is as black as ebony!” Berowne replies:

O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?
That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack
If that she learn not of her eye to look?
No face is fair that is not full so black.

To counter the King’s argument, Berowne asserts that women in general need to learn from Rosaline’s dark appearance the true image of beauty. In the sonnet, we also read the words “beauty lack,” though there the speaker is criticizing women’s use of cosmetics to lighten their naturally dark complexion. In the play, when the King contradicts Berowne, saying:

O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons and the school of night;
And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well. 

Berowne cleverly retorts:

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked,
It mourns that painting and usurping hair
Should ravish doters with a false aspect:
And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Berowne posits that the devil make himself resemble “spirits of light,” and if Rosaline’s eyebrows were painted black instead of naturally black, she would deceive with a false appearance, in a similar manner the way the “foul” women attempt to do in Sonnet 127 when they, “Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face.” The logic of Berowne’s argument in the play corresponds in obvious ways to what the speaker offers in Sonnet 127, and his submission to the implacable Rosaline is delightfully entertaining.

A woman’s facial appearance was a popular topic in Elizabethan England. (See Hamlet, III, 1) And, for that matter, a young man’s. (See Sonnet 20) Today, women and men expend more time and money over their appearance than Shakespeare’s contemporaries did. How many use cosmetics and that magical elixir Botox to arrest the effect of the passing years? Is Hamlet right when he says,

I have heard of your paintings too, well
enough. God hath given you one face, and you
make yourselves another.

It is fascinating to witness how astutely Shakespeare renders in his plays and poems the ways we think and behave. Although reading him requires much more effort and time than many contemporary novels, plays and poems, the reward we receive always grows the more we continue to enjoy the brilliance of his works.

A Shakespeare Sonnet

As a playwright, William Shakespeare’s reputation remains as strong as ever. Although bent toward the latest literary trends and a penchant for the cutting edge, some high school English departments no longer require teaching his plays in their English classes. Some universities and colleges have foolishly dropped Shakespeare as required reading for their English majors, yet his dramatic works continue to be widely read and performed by both professional and amateur artists worldwide. Besides being the world’s greatest dramatist, Shakespeare’s sonnets qualify him as one of the greatest lyric poets. Reading them, though challenging, is highly rewarding. Sonnet 73 is a good place to introduce a new reader to a journey worth traveling:

                            Sonnet 73 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
    This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, excluding the ones he incorporated in some of his plays. As you read this Shakespearean or English sonnet, you will notice a structure that all his sonnets follow. It has four parts, three groups of four lines and two concluding lines. The four-line sections are called quatrains and the final two lines a couplet. This particular structure is named after Shakespeare, not because he invented the form, that credit goes to Henry Howard. When reading his sonnets, it is interesting to observe the ways in which Shakespeare varies and relates the contents of these “parts.”

In the first quatrain, the speaker addresses his beloved, “thou,” and depicts himself as old and nearing the end of his life. The imagery of the empty “boughs which shake against the cold” as “bare ruined choirs” is unambiguous. The music of youth has long left the speaker, and his physical state is frail. The quatrain’s effect is not necessarily tragic but certainly tinged with rueful sadness.

The second quatrain employs a second metaphor, one in which the speaker states that his beloved recognizes in him “the twilight of such day” after the sun has set. That “twilight” denotes unequivocally what the speaker only suggested in quatrain 1, that death is near and soon will arrive. The sorrow of the first quatrain has progressed and seems deeper and darker at this point in the poem.

Both quatrains 1 and 2 proceed along linear trajectories. Quatrain 1 intimates the process of youth to old age, from spring, summer, autumn and winter. Quatrain 2 measures time through the hours of a day, from morning to noon to afternoon, to sunset to twilight and finally into darkest night. In quatrain 1 one hears a note of nostalgia of those departed “sweet birds” along with the frailty of old age. Quatrain 2 positions the speaker nearer death yet also introduces a serene acceptance of final “rest”: “seals up all in rest.”

Whereas quatrains 1 and 2 follow similar linear formulations, quatrain 3 offer a different mode of change. The speaker now fashions his last metaphor into one of a dying fire. In quatrains 1 and 2, the speaker identifies with the image “bare ruined choirs,” and “black night” signify emptiness and darkest oblivion respectively, and it is time that impels the speaker into his old age of fragile limbs and toward “black night” of oblivion. In quatrain 3, he represents himself as a “glowing fire,” which is part of a continuous process that is a chemical rather than temporal process. Of course, this continuous process also denotes the change the speaker is experiencing. But in this metaphor of “ashes” and “glowing fire” he retains part of his essential vitality (“fire”) of who he is.

The declarative couplet that ties up the sonnet ascribes the thoughts that are traced through the quatrains directly to the beloved addressed by the speaker. As such, the beloved becomes a mirror of the speaker’s complex mind and the poem that offers a reflection of a relationship that spans 126 of the 154 sonnets.

This is just one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. His sonnets explore love, mortality, time, humor, lust, jealousy, and so on. Shakespeare was a master at characterization, which you will discover in his plays but also in his sonnets. In the next few posts, we will consider these themes while reading through a selection of Shakespeare’s works.

Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

 In my previous post, I featured a poem by Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aengus. Yeats derived his idea for the poem from the eighth century Irish myth The Dream of Aengus. For easy reference, here is Yeats’s poem again:

 The Song of the Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

This phenomenal poem of magic, beauty, desire and visionary quest ends with Aengus not forlorn but determined to search on forever. His perseverance to find the “girl” and “pluck…The silver apples of the moon, / The golden apples of the sun” calls to mind a sentence Yeats later wrote: The “passionate feed their flame in wanderings and absences, when the whole being of the beloved, every little charm of body and soul, is always present in the mind, filling it with subtleties and desires.” Aengus’ physical “quest” for his “glimmering girl” who “called me by my name” will not succeed, but his memory of her voice and his desire of hearing it once more evoke a simple joy and hopefulness in him and the reader all the same. An obvious theme in this poem is Yeats’s love and hopeless pursuit of Maud Gonne.

Like Yeats, John Keats (1795-1820), found inspiration in the lore of medieval tales. He was fascinated with The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser’s (1551-1599), an epic poem of knights and damsels in distress. In Keats’s La Belle Dame sans Merci, A medieval knight believes he finds love, but instead becomes ensnared by a bewitching beauty:

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

III.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

IV.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

V.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

VII.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
"I love thee true."

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep.
And there I dream'd—Ah! woe betide
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.

X.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—"La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

XI.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

XII.

And is this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
 

Keats wrote La Belle Dame San Merci on April 21, 1819. He wrote it in the style of a short, medieval ballad and tells the story of a knight beguiled and destroyed by a bewitching fairy lady. The opening two lines are famous and introduce the unnamed speaker who comes upon this knight and asks what is troubling him: “O what can ail thee, knight at arms, / Alone and palely loitering?” The next two lines end the stanza, and the reader should notice that Keats did not enclose the words in quotation marks, which leaves unclear who speaks these words. Is this still the unnamed speaker who initiates the poem or is it the response of the knight?

Most readers take the words as a continuation of the speaker’s question. It makes more sense to see them as the knight’s reply to the speaker’s question, since the imagery mirrors the knight’s wasting physical and spiritual condition: “the sedge has wither’d from the lake, / And no birds sing.” When the speaker repeats his question in stanza 2, his perception of the knight’s condition deepens as he notices the knight’s deathlike appearance and irreversible despair: “O what can ail thee, knight at arms, / So haggard and so woe begone?” The knight again directly replies, and his mysterious response affirms his condition: “The squirrel’s granary is full, / And the harvest’s done.” Though the harvest imagery can suggest abundance, with Keats it also presages death. (See Keats’s later poem, To Autumn, stanza 2)

The third stanza concludes the Questions and answers with the speaker enunciating without acknowledging the knight is dying:

I see a lily on thy brow
    With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
        Fast withereth too.

After stanza 3, the knight reveals what has sickened him. Just as there is a back and forth between the speaker and the knight, the knight and the “lady in the meads” also engage in a form of communication in stanzas 4-8. The knight meets the lady, is immediately smitten with her and then makes her gifts, “garlands,” “bracelets,” “fragrant zone” (a girdle). She in turn, “look’d at me as she did love, / And made sweet moan.” The knight woos the lady with these gifts, but does he succeed in winning her love? The line, “She look’d at me as she did love,” seems to suggest he succeeds. But a closer reading of the line reveals its ambiguity. It could be read as either “she did love him,” or the line might mean she looked at him only “as if she did love” him.

Stanzas 7 complicates matters further. The knight swoops the lady onto his horse and rides “all day long,” which reads like an abduction and the lady’s response further obscures what is taking place. Is she mutually engaged with the knight or is she his captive victim? She sings “A fairy’s song,” feeds him “roots,” “honey,” and “manna,” then “sure in language strange she said— / I love thee true.” The knight is confident her words are a declaration of love for him, even though the language she speaks is beyond his understanding.

In stanzas 8, and 9 his [over]confidence leads him to be led into her “grot” where he kisses her “wild wild eyes,” and she lulls him “asleep.” While asleep he dreams of all the “pale kings,” “princes,” and “Pale warriors” who have been victims beguiled by the “lady in the meads.” He sees “their starv’d lips…/With horrid warning gaped wide…” When he awakes, he finds himself alone on “the cold hill’s side.”

The gothic imagery of love and death, of dreaming and waking, and the knight’s inescapable despondency are the effects of the knight’s being seduced by the lady “sans merci.” The final stanza circles the reader back to stanza 1 and encloses the loop which encircles the knight in an eternal psychological inferno.