on sonnet #130
I'm curious about why the final line of #130 is so often misread (and therefore presumably misunderstood), as it is here and was in the finals of the national Poetry Out Loud last year.
The line reads: "Than any she [pause] belied by false compare"
[i.e., than any woman who is belied (lied about) by using false (stale) comparisons]
and not "Than any [pause] she belied [pause] by false compare"
[which presumably would mean that "she" (i.e. his mistress, being the only available antecedent?) told lies about].
Shakespeare is here making gentle fun of the tropes used by "traditional" sonneteers, as a way of praising his mistress's beauty (i.e., I swear that she is more beautiful than all those who are praised by false, conventional tropes).
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