SONNET XX

In the present text I'm going to analyse the sonnet XX by Wlliam Shakespeare.

The sonnet belongs to the collection of the marriage sonnets and it is dedicated to the fair youth.

Only considering the layout the reader can understand it is a Shakespearean sonnet because it complies with the typical Elizabethan conventions of the sonnet. It is arranged into three quatrains in alternate rhyme, that take different aspects of the same problem into consideration, and a rhyming couplet.

In the first quatrain the speaking voice tells the reader that the fair youth is created by nature with lots of female traits. Indeed he is preseted with a woman's face and gentle heart. Compared with women, he presents all positive features lacking their typical flaws. In line two the word master conveys the idea of a male person even so the word misteress recalls to a female one, that is the fair youth appears with an unclear gender.

The function of the first stanza and the first two lines of the second quatrain is to describe the fair youth's feminine beauty. In line one the nature is shown like a paintress (nature's own hand painted) while in the line ten she is shown like a sculptress (as she wrought thee).

In the second stanza the intelligent reader can understand the fair youth attracts the admiration both of men and of women because of his womanly beauty.

In the third quatrain the reder can understand there is a personification of the nature. Also Nature, indeed, falls in love with the fair youth that she has create as a woman. So, Nature adds him something that makes the fair youth a man. In this way Shakespeare's desire for the fair youth is obstacolated.

In the final couplet the speaking voice undelines with the word the love that Shakespeare 's love for the fair youth is different from the women's love that is described as the love's use. That is Shakespeare's love is a spiritual love and it isn't based on physicality.