Sonnet 20 Sonnet 20 Sonnet 20 is one of the best-known of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets 1-126), the subject of the sonnet is widely interpreted as being male, thereby raising questions about the sexuality of its author. In this sonnet (as in, for example, Sonnet 53) the beloved's beauty is compared to both a man's and a woman's. Sonnet 20 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet, containing three quatrains and a couplet for a total of fourteen lines. It follows the rhyme scheme of this
Sonnet 11 showing his waste in not complying to "print more". Sonnet 11 is composed in the traditional form of what has come to be called the "Shakespearean" sonnet, also known as a "Surreyan" or "English" sonnet. The form, having evolved from the "Petrarchan" sonnet (originated in the thirteenth or fourteenth century by Italian poet Francesco Petrarch), entered the style as Shakespeare would have known it within the works of sixteenth century English poets the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. However, as it came to be the most popular sonnet form with which Shakespeare wrote his poetry, it took on