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 42 pentameter based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. Line 10 exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: The first three lines may be scanned: In the first and third lines, Shakespeare emphasizes pronouns by putting them in metrically strong positions, encouraging the reader to place contrastive accent on them, thereby emphasizing the antithetical relationships plaguing the Speaker. This technique is common in the Sonnets, and continues through this sonnet. The second line has a final extrametrical syllable or "feminine ending" (one of six in this sonnet). Some of the sonnets discuss a love triangle between the speaker, his mistress and