We have met a couple of Shakespeare’s dark ladies, but I have a perverse curiosity to poke around the private world of The Dark Lady of his sonnets.
In Sonnet 144, the speaker compares his fair male companion, “the better angel,” to the “worser spirit a woman colour’d ill” who “tempteth my better angel from my side.” Those are some pretty damning words for the dark seductress the speaker spends 28 poems in heated obsession over.
The poet squeezed like a vice between unadulterated love and the corruptive enticement of lustful desire. The speaker goes on to say in Sonnet 147
that he thought this dark, erotic temptress was good, but is actually “as black as hell, as dark as night.”
An infidelity theme resonates again as he insists that she lies to him and is unfaithful, He asks, “But wherefore says she not she is unjust?”
Ironically, it is he who is consumed by his love for her, and it is she who has him by the noose.
In Sonnet 145, the Dark Lady, “Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate' /To me that languish'd for her sake,” and only correct herself to add “not you” when she saw how distraught he was.
The man is whipped by a woman; a woman whose role is to be subservient.
Does he have a shrew for a lover? Is he so beguiled by her womanly powers, her powerful dark forces that have the ability to control the moon?
She is not so fair, she is so dark.
So dark, so deep that he cannot wield the upper hand.
It is nice to see that not every female was not either beaten into docility or burned at the stake.
We have met a couple of Shakespeare’s dark ladies, but I have a perverse curiosity to poke around the private world of The Dark Lady of his sonnets. In Sonnet 144, the speaker compares his fair male companion, “the better angel,” to the “worser spirit a woman colour’d ill” who “tempteth my better angel from my side.” Those are some pretty damning words for the dark seductress the speaker spends 28 poems in heated obsession over. The poet squeezed like a vice between unadulterated love and the corruptive enticement of lustful desire. The speaker goes on to say in Sonnet 147 that he thought this dark, erotic temptress was good, but is actually “as black as hell, as dark as night.” An infidelity theme resonates again as he insists that she lies to him and is unfaithful, He asks, “But wherefore says she not she is unjust?” Ironically, it is he who is consumed by his love for her, and it is she who has him by the noose. In Sonnet 145, the Dark Lady, “Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate' /To me that languish'd for her sake,” and only correct herself to add “not you” when she saw how distraught he was. The man is whipped by a woman; a woman whose role is to be subservient. Does he have a shrew for a lover? Is he so beguiled by her womanly powers, her powerful dark forces that have the ability to control the moon? She is not so fair, she is so dark. So dark, so deep that he cannot wield the upper hand. It is nice to see that not every female was not either beaten into docility or burned at the stake. 
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