Sonnet 20, by Willian Shakespeare

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change as is false women’s fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,

Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created,

Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

    But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,

      Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

ANALYSIS

The sonnet is arranged into three stanza which are quatreins and a rhyming couplet. The sonnet infact follow the typical conventions of the Elisabethan or Shakespearean’s sonnet. In the first quatrein the speaking voice tells that Fair youth was created by the Nature to be as a woman. So, in the beginnin he has to be a woman with a gentle heart and woman’s eyes.In the second stanza, the speaking voice continues to describe the youth’s female beauty.Then the speaking voice argues that he astounds all the woman thanks to his feminine beauty. Infact he steals men’s eyes and women’s soul. The speaking voice tells the fair youth was created as woman by Nature, but then She falls in love with what She (the Nature) had created, and so She changed the fair woman into a fair youth.

In the end, the speaking voice, embittered for what Nature has done, tells that his love for the fair youth is real, meanwhile women’s one is only for pleasure.

In the last line, the speaking voice uses two time the words “thy love” which adds meaning and underlines storngly the difference between his love and the other women’s one. The theme of time isn’t adfirmed as in the other sonnets because the speaking voice wants to focus his attention on Fair youth life. He is the William shakespeare beloved, but in the beginning he borned as a woman, with all the positive aspects a woman can be. The first two quatrein provides to give to the fair youth the woman’s quality he had before. So many words used belongs to the semantic field of female. Whereas, the third and the fourth stanza provides to give to the fair youth his qualities, which belongs to the semantic field of male. The function of the rhymining couplet is to provide a conclusion, in where the speaking voice provides a direct tought about the fair youth, his beloved one.