Sonnet 127” is the first in a series of 23 poems devoted to the subject of the “Dark Lady”, Shakespeare’s mistress (Hubler 38). Shakespeare scholar Hubler describes this series of sonnets as a cycle of poems that “tell of an amour which began in pleasure and ended in moral loathing” (38). What makes the sonnets remarkable, and “Sonnet 127” and “Sonnet 130” exemplary, is that they challenge the traditionalsonnet form and meaning, which was established and perfected by Shakespeare’s predecessors and contemporaries, Greville, Petrarch, Sidney, and Spenser the most notable examples among them. In earlier sonnets, the subject of the poet’s attention was almost always that of love, and specifically, the idealization and idolization of the object of the poet’s affection (Hubler 39). Consider, for example, the following characterizations of ideal womanhood that appear in Spenser’s sonnet, “Fair is my love, when her fair golden hairs.” Before the lines of the poem even begin in earnest, the title orients the reader to the subject and the degree of beauty which will be described. The poet immediately establishes that his love is fair, and that she has “golden hair,” (l. 1), a fact which will become particularly important when our attention is turned towards Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130.”