My Mistress is Not a Goddess: a Continuous Conversation with Sonnet 130

Interpretation 1

The way we interact with a text depends upon that with which we are aware of at any given time. In my younger more optimistic years before the form of poetry was laid before me like a map, I arrived upon Shakespeare's 130th Sonnet (I know Shakespeare 'how original') with a sort-of romantic idealization. At the time I was very much enamored with a girl who did not even begin to conform to society's standards, she wasn't beautiful or graceful or even very kind, but I loved her all the same and when I read this ode to imperfection my minds eye conjured up her face:

Sonnet 130

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 damasked, 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.

The text seems to lend itself to this initial interpretation. The first twelve lines a pattern which plays on the assumptions of what one should say about their lover: her "eye's are...like the sun" and flip them around to contradict expectation. The beauty of it though lies in the way that despite their recognition of a voice less than melodious or a gait that in no way resembles a glide, none of the comments come off as complaints. He still loves "to hear her speak" knowing that her voice isn't inherently pleasant. In fact this is a "rare" affection, uncommon in the courts of men who see only the physical. Blinded by my own love at the time, I believed this; I didn't occur to me the ways in which this is an obvious tribute to Shakespeare's dark lady.

Interpretation 2

Reexamining the story of fondness for a lover's imperfections, it becomes clear that a number of these descriptions aren't of imperfections at all, but rather of traits associated with women of color that merely seem to be imperfect because of the way they are described by absence with the associated European beauty ideals. When one is expecting skin white as snow and cheeks "damasked red and white", but receives "breasts [that] are dun" and rosy-less cheeks, it makes sense to be disappointed. In this way the text leads you to consider it's subject unattractive as it defines her by what she lacks rather than the traits which make her lovely. Her "dun" skin and wiry hair aren't unappealing they are merely a consequence of her (most likely) Mediterranean heritage.

17th c. European Beauty Standards

In a roundabout way perhaps that is the intention of describing her as such, while still ending it with the lines "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare". An acknowledgment that he loves her despite all the things she isn't and will never be. 

Interpretation 3 

Knowing as I do now a great deal more about the poetic form than I did in my more idyllic years from which spawned the previous interpretations, the irony of my syrupy machinations on a poem which is essentially satiric have not escaped me. I don't know how familiar you, my dear reader, are with the Italian Sonnet, but the form of Sonnet 130 parodies it.
Petrarch, the man made famous for perfecting the Italian sonnet, had a fondness for a particular style of complement that came to be known as Petrarchan conceits. Typically a Petrarchan conceit is a hyperbolic comparison of ones lover to some object or another which holds grand metaphoric value. Such as those used by Edmund Spenser in an excerpt from his poem below:

Epithalamion

Tell me ye merchants daughters did ye see
So fayre a creature in your towne before?
So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she,
Adornd with beautyes grace and vertues store,
Her goodly eyes lyke Saphyres shining bright,
Her forehead yvory white,
Her cheekes lyke apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips lyke cherries charming men to byte,
Her brest like to a bowle of creame uncrudded,
Her paps lyke lyllies budded,
Her snowie necke lyke to a marble towre,
And all her body like a pallace fayre,
Ascending uppe with many a stately stayre,
To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre.
Why stand ye still ye virgins in amaze,
Upon her so to gaze,
Whiles ye forget your former lay to sing,
To which the woods did answer and your echo ring.

It's a play-by-play of everything which Shakespeare's work scorns. If in Epithalamion her breasts are "like to a bowle of creame uncrudded" then in Sonnet 130 they are "dun" and so on and so forth. The first twelve lines a parody upon this extravagant style. What I at first took for romance became a mere play at it; a critical interpretation of his opponents success.

Final Thoughts 

With the depth of my knowledge growing deeper each passing year, the way I understood this piece began to evolve, but even knowing as I now do the poem to be a satirical spoof on the Italian form I can't help, but to think my initial interpretations just as valid now as they were then. The beauty of art lies within it's ambiguity. It's up to the reader to create meaning from the words dispensed. Provided that one can back up their interpretation, who's to say the meaning produced is right or wrong?