Question

Today the word mistress has a negative connotation and is used to refer to an adulterous woman. What did mistress mean as used in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130"?

Answer 1

The word mistress during the Elizabethan era which was the time when Shakespeare wrote his plays had a very different meaning from the one we know nowadays.

A mistress was a high society woman, while people used to call master the men they also used to call mistress the women, so in this sonnet, he talks about his loved one as a woman with class and grace not a woman with a dubious reputation as we would think at first.