Hi, I'm Rebecca Balcarcel, and I love Shakespeare, so I'm so excited to share today his sonnet,
"My Mistress's Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun."
This is a love poem, and on top of that it's a love poem that makes
fun of love poems.
Most love poems are filled with a bunch of flattery and exaggerated, uh, comparisons
between the- the beloved's qualities and some kind of amazing,
you know, natural phenomenon.
Like, "Oh, your eyes are like stars, and your lips are like cherries, and..."
He has read a lot of these poems.
So Shakespeare does something different here, and surprises the beloved by sending a poem
that says, "You know what?
Your eyes really are not like the sun, your lips are not red as coral,
your music- your voice is not like music, but I love you anyway.
In fact, I love you for who you really are."
And the beloved feels appreciated for her real qualities,
and we are assured that this lover who's writing the poem is not just falling in love with
some aggrandized image of the beloved, some pedestal image, but instead
actually appreciates her for who she is.
So, how refreshing!
Let's look at the poem.
Okay, "My Mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun.
Coral is far more red than her lips is red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun..." (which means tan)
"...If hairs be wires, then black wires grow on her head.
I've seen roses damasked red and white..."
(like embroidered) "...but no such roses see I in her cheeks.
And in some perfume there is more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks."
Now, "reeks" is harsher nowadays than it used to be, but...
"I love to hear her speak, and yet 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 I think my love is rare, as any she belied
with false compare."
I love those last two lines.
It means, uh, "I think my love is rare and wonderful as any of those
women who are lied to with all those false comparisons."
Nice, huh?
Let me say a few technical things about the poem.
First of all, it's a sonnet, which is a popular English form, and the line length is 14, 14
lines.
It also has a particular rhyme pattern, and you probably
noticed that as I was reading, that you have, you know, "reeks" rhymes with "cheeks," "dun"
rhymes with "sun," and it's actually in a every-other-one pattern.
So line one and three rhyme, and lines two and four rhyme, and it goes on like that.
Now the last two lines are special.
These are a couple.
They're hinged together, because they both have the same rhyme at the end.
So, "I think my love is rare, as any she belied with false compare."
So that ending rhyme gives us a sense of closure.
It makes it feel like, "Ah!
The poem is done."
Almost like a piece of music that has gotten to that final chord:
Ta-da!
That's the effect of a rhymed couplet being at the end of the sonnet.
Another thing going on here is rhythm.
So the words are not just shuffled onto the page,
you know, just because they make sense in this order.
They are chosen for the stress of their syllables, the emphasis that comes in- on certain parts
of the word.
So we have, "My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun."
Now I'm exaggerating it, but we have a da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA working through the whole poem.
That means we've got ten syllables: "My mis-tress' eyes
are no-thing like the sun."
'Aight, but they're in this pattern of da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA, so we have actually, uh,
five little da-DA's.
Now in English-speak, uh, English as in the study of English, we have a name for that
da-DA, and it's called an iam.
So we have five of those, and that's why we have iambic pentameter.
That's the- the name for the rhythm of a sonnet.
Iambic means that it has iams, da-DA's, instead of something like DA-da, we
have five da-DA's.
And the fact that there's five, that's where the "penta" comes from, and then the "meter"
is actually the word "meter" which simply means rhythm.
So we have, uh, five of these iams creating the rhythm.
Iambic pentameter.
That's it.
So we have a sonnet written in iambic pentameter with a particular rhyme scheme, and, uh, this
rhymed couplet at the end.
So Shakespeare's managed to convey not only love and humor, but also he's done it through
this musical form, the sonnet.
Isn't it cool?
Okay, I hope you'll join me for another Shakespear video or just another
video, and I hope you've enjoyed this poem.