Sonnet 20, William 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; 4
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. 8
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. 12
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure. 14
—William
Shakespeare
1) The sonnet 20 is one of the 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare between 1580 and
1609 and dedicated to a mysterious Mr W.H. It was published in 1609 in a quarto titled Shake-
speare's Sonnets. It belongs to the collection of sonnets addressed to a Fair Youth, an
unnamed young man, either the Earl of Southampton or that of Pembroke, who were both his
friends and patrons.
2)Summary:In the first quatrain, the speaker tells his listener, who is considered to be a young
man (The Fair Youth) that he has a face painted by Nature, as beautiful as a woman's. The
famous word/phrase, “master-mistress” does not make clear whether he is speaking about a
man or not. In fact, the listener is gentle like a woman but he is less fickle. In the second
quatrain, the speaker goes on to allude to the young person's beauty once more but also
suggests that beauty appeals to both men and women. In the final quatrain the speaker says
that this person was created for a woman, alluding to his male gender. In fact, Nature gave
him organs that the speaker, a man, does not have any use for. The sexual allusion continues
in the next lines: the word “pricked” is used to refer to a phallus made for “women pleasure”.
But the poet states that the Fair Lord's love can belong to him even as the use of his love (the
sexual act) reamains for the ladies.
Theme: Some scholars claimed that this sonnet suggests the narrator's homosexuality
although we have no definitive facts about the nature of William Shakespeare's love life. The
main theme is the struggle between platonic love and carnal lust:the poet knows that his
love can never be consummated but he keeps the love of the young man for himself.
3) Sonnet 20 is a typical Shakespearean Sonnet, containing three quatrains and a couplet for a
total of fourteen lines. In the three quatrains the poet establishes a theme or problem and
then resolves it in the final two lines, called the couplet. The rhyme scheme of the quatrains is
ABAB CDCD EFEF while the couplet has the rhyme scheme GG. It is the only sonnet which has
all feminine rhymes because Shakespeare wanted his work to reflect tha feminine aspect of
the fair youth's character. It is written in IAMBIC PENTAMETERS. There are several literary
devices in this sonnet like:
- Oxymoron, “master-mistress”
→ This is part of the gender-bending dynamics at play in the poem. The listener is a man, or is
he a woman? Even the title of the sonnet “A woman's face” makes us think that it would be
about a woman but it won't.
- Allitteration, “false women's fashion”, “than theirs”
-Metaphor: in line six the speaker compares the young man's gaze to “gilding”, it turns
everything it touches to gold. This is a way of saying that he blesses the world with his sight.
- Personification: “nature's own hand painted”
→ Nature is a female force who, in creating the perfect being, decides to create a man rather
than a woman. Shakespeare wishes that the fair youth was a woman but realizes Nature has
defeated him by making the beautiful woman a man. That is why all the traits of femenine
nature are negatively described: falsehood, guile and infidelity.
- The poem ends with a pun, saying that Nature (a woman) did this: “But since she pricked
thee out for women's pleasure”. We understand “prick'd out” as a gardening term together
with the more colloquial sense of “prick” to mean penis.
Interpretation: the sonnet explores the relationship between desire and gender which
demostrates the way gender binds desire. This is why homoerotism cannot be repressed but at
the same time it cannot be celebrated.
