Sonnet 130

I was just listening (again) to Alan Rickman's recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, found via the Smart Bitches, and I was struck, as always, by how he can completely make me melt into a puddle for thirteen lines, and then completely lose me when he misreads the last one. Why, Alan? Why did you have to insert an invisible "whom" where no whom ought to be?

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 damask'd, 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.

Shall we walk through it? Yes, let's.

It's a Shakespearian sonnet (that's a formal designation, not an indication of the author), so the turn should be after the third quatrain - and there it is, at line thirteen. The first twelve lines are all inversions of standard Petrarchan similes describing the poet's lover, but even if you didn't know that, it's pretty obvious that he's rejecting common florid descriptions. Whether you want to read it as the poet acknowledging his mistress's imperfections and loving her regardless, or as a more calculating poet deciding that no woman could live up to the similes, so he may as well stick with the one he has, I don't think there's any way to read it as a celebration of the idealized woman.

So why, tell me, would anyone take the "she" in the final line as the subject of an unspoken "whom" clause, when it's quite clearly an example of synechdoche referring to all women?

Wrong
As {any} [she] belied |with false compare|
where: {direct object} [subject] verb |sub-clause|

Right
As [any she] belied \with false compare\
where: [subject] verb \agent of passive verb\

In other words, it's not the mistress doing the belying, it's the similes which set a standard no woman can possibly achieve. To say that your mistress walks like a goddess is to insult her, not only because real people just aren't like that, but because it implies that your love for her is based on a quality that she doesn't even possess.

And just for fun: