Sonnet 20 - Analysis

Analysis

While there is much evidence that suggests the narrator’s homosexuality, there are also countless academics who have argued against the theory. Both approaches can be used to analyze the sonnet.

Philip C. Kolin of the University of Southern Mississippi interprets several lines from the first two quatrains of Sonnet 20 as written by a homosexual figure. One of the most common interpretations of line 2 is that the speaker believes, “the young man has the beauty of a woman and the form of a man...Shakespeare bestows upon the young man feminine virtues divorced from all their reputedly shrewish infidelity.” In other words, the young man possesses all the positive qualities of a woman, without all of her negative qualities. The narrator seems to believe that the young man is as beautiful as any woman, but is also more faithful and less fickle. Kolin also argues that, “numerous, though overlooked, sexual puns run throughout this indelicate panegyric to Shakespeare’s youthful friend.” He suggests the reference to the youth’s eyes, which gild the objects upon which they gaze, may also be a pun on “gelding…The feminine beauty of this masculine paragon not only enhances those in his sight but, with the sexual meaning before us, gelds those male admirers who temporarily fall under the sway of the feminine grace and pulchritude housed in his manly frame.”

Amy Stackhouse suggests an interesting interpretation of the form of sonnet 20. Stackhouse explains that the form of the sonnet (written in iambic pentameter with an extra-unstressed syllable on each line) lends itself to the idea of a “gender-bending” model. The unstressed syllable is a feminine rhyme, yet the addition of the syllable to the traditional form may also represent a phallus. Stackhouse also comments on the reveal of the gender of the addressee in the final few lines as a way of Shakespeare playing with the idea of gender throughout the poem. Stackhouse’s analysis of the nature aspect also seemed to play into the “gender-bending” model by creating this idea of Mother Nature falling in love with her creation and thus imparting a phallus to him. Which is represented in the extra-unstressed syllable as well.

This idea of nature is also reflected in Philip C. Kolin’s analysis of the last part of the poem as well. Kolin’s observation of Shakespeare’s discussion of the man being for “women’s pleasure” does not lend itself to this idea of bisexuality or gender-bending at all. This is where Shakespeare is clearly saying that this is not homosexual love. Kolin is saying that nature made him for “women’s pleasure” and that is what is “natural”. Kolin goes on to say that the phrase “to my purpose nothing” also reflects this natural aspect of being created for women’s pleasure. In this, however, he takes no account of Shakespeare's common pun of "nothing" ("O") to mean vagina. Whereas Stackhouse would argue the poem is almost gender neutral, Kolin would argue that the poem is “playful” and “sexually (dualistic)”