To explain the presence of the "dark lady", Stanborough asserts that she is the good self's exact opposite: "The first was masculine, so this one is necessarily characterized as feminine; the first was 'faire,' or light, so this one is 'colour'd ill.'" The entire argument is based in the fact that Stanborough believes that, in order to have creative insight, an artist has mental divisions between depression and joy. Booth exposes the underlying sexual nature of the poem in line 12 where it states "one angel in another's hell". He talks about the work of Ingram and Redpath when they discuss the meanings used for hell in the time Shakespeare was writing. They wrote that "several meanings appear to be present: ... such a position was often used as a pretext for a sexual tumble; 'hell' is probably also... the female sexual organ" in which case "'one angel' is the man, and 'another' is the woman" clearly engaging in sex.