Sonnet 20

Sonnet 20 is among the most famous of William Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. It belongs to the Fair Youth group (sonnets 1–126), and its subject is widely understood to be a young man, which has led to ongoing discussion about the poet’s own sexuality. Like Sonnet 53, this poem compares the beloved’s beauty to both masculine and feminine qualities.

Structure

The sonnet follows the standard English or Shakespearean structure: three quatrains and a concluding couplet, totaling fourteen lines. Its rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and it is written in iambic pentameter, a meter built on five pairs of weak and strong syllables. Uniquely, this sonnet uses feminine rhymes—an extra unstressed syllable at the end of every line—throughout. The first line demonstrates this pattern: “A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,” with the final syllable falling outside the regular beat.

Context

Scholars generally place Sonnet 20 within the Fair Youth sequence, where the speaker addresses a young man. This reading fuels the common assumption that Shakespeare—or at least the sonnet’s speaker—was homosexual. The sonnet’s position in the sequence also shapes how it is analyzed. William Nelles of the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth notes that the poem divides readers: some see the sequence as ending here, while others find a continuing narrative thread.

Many theories exist about how to organize the sonnets. Some scholars see a clear split between those addressed to a young man and those that are not, while others argue for a complex narrative. Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells contend that the sonnets are better viewed as a collection rather than a sequence, since they do not form a single unity, and though many of the first 126 poems clearly relate to a young man, others could apply to either gender.

Sexuality

Modern readers often question whether the sonnet reflects Shakespeare’s own sexuality. Context matters: Casey Charles explains that no official identity for a gay person existed in Shakespeare’s time. Words for what we now call homosexual behavior were in use, but the concept of a gay culture or identity was absent. Early modern sodomy laws were rarely enforced, suggesting either that such acts were uncommon or that they were more socially tolerated than we might assume.