SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET 20 AND THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY

In the following text I’m going to analyse Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20 so as to point out its connotative meaning and express my own opinion about it also referring to the analogies between poem’s protagonist and Dorian Grey.

As to the layout, Sonnet 20 is arranged into an only stanza made up of fourteen lines of different length written in alternative rhymes.

The poet mostly refers to his beloved man and characterises his qualities, for he possesses great beauty, intense attractiveness and female charm: indeed, Nature firstly meant to shape a girl, but throughout creation she felt so doting and provided the youth with the only thing he hadn’t already been given, a prick.

Moving now on a deeper connotative analysis, the intelligent reader can easily state that Shakespeare is confessing his love towards a youth, who’s so tempting that both women and men feel his attraction. The poet doesn’t however let out his intention to mate with him, because the only one thing he really desires is his love, not his body, which is meant to satisfy women’s will.

It is possible to state that the formal and archaic language Shakespeare exploits serves as a covering of the bawdy topic he wants to convey. I have however no right to go on with any further opinion, since his love affairs and preferences are not open to argument to anybody.

Sonnet 20 and “The Picture of Dorian Grey” share two common topics: beauty and youth.

In Shakespeare’s poem the writer himself praises these elements, whereas in regards to Dorian Grey the task is appointed to a character of the novel, the portraitist’s friend Henry Wotton.