Sonnet notes 25

Sonnet 127, line 4: “And Beauty slander’d with a bastard shame”

Sonnet 127 introduces us to the Dark Lady, as she has come to be known. We are only told that her eyes are “Raven black.” Of course, this must mean that she has black brows and hair instead of being blonde, or “fair-haired,” since the eyes themselves may be dark brown or grey, but not wholly black. (In Sonnet 130, we are explicitly told that her hair is black.) But even in this first sonnet about her, it is hard not to be struck by the negative undertones hinted at by the words slander’d and bastard. Although here, as usually with Shakespeare, slander’d must mean “reproached, disgraced” without implying the modern sense of “falsely accused,” also current at the time, it sounds angry. Beauty is said to be disgraced, carrying as much shame as a bastard does, unable to claim a proper title to its name when the fair claim it unnaturally through the use of cosmetics. These words are charged with emotion. The poet seems not merely to be making an appeal to accept his chosen ideal of beauty, pronounced so boldly in the last line: That every tongue says beauty should look so. This is a challenge; from the very beginning, the poet sounds defiant.