TESTO ARGOMENTATIVO SHAKESPEARE

Up to now, you should have read some sonnets by Italian or English poets. Now, consider

sonnet n.20 and express every consideration that crosses your mind and conclude your

dissertation with personal judgment.

Shakespeare’s sonnet n.20 is one of the most important ones belonging to the first collection of Sonnets, addressed to the Fair Youth. The Fair Youth is here the young men the first 126 sonnets refers to, but it is also can be considered as Youth in general. Indeed, the way “youth” is described makes the reader think the poet is speaking to the youth, something that doesn’t last forever and drifts away, something he’s in love with.

The sonnet starts with the description of the Fair Youth, who has the traits of a woman. He has got all the best features a woman has, but not the worst ones: he has “a woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted” and a gentle heart, but he’s not as false as Shakespeare tells about women. The Fair Youth is the subject of men’s love, while he’s also subject of admiration from women. The first six lines provide the description of the Fair Youth. The following lines reveal a particular that totally changes Shakespeare’s love for the Youth. Nature had added a “thing” to the Fair Youth that makes him the subject of women’s “love”, as the poet tells in the last two lines, but it does deserve nothing to the poet, who can’t love the Fair Youth as he did before this addition.

In conclusion, the Fair Youth the subject of men’s love at first because he had all the positive traits of a woman, but Nature has turned him into the subject of women’s love with this “thing”, which the reader understands himself what does the poet refers to. One can say the sonnet is about physical and spiritual love between men and woman, explained to the Fair Youth, who can be interpreted as a young man or as youth, meant as the period of life.