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 109 the case, then Sonnet 109 does contain some imagery that might refer to Wriothesley. Quatrain 1 (lines 1-4) In "Of Comfort and Despair: Shakespeare's Sonnet Sequence", Robert Witt asserts that in Sonnet 109 Shakespeare comes to the realization of his lover's "Inner Beauty" and how it is a reflection of himself. The poet [Shakespeare]…will remain young as long as the friend [lover] is young because the two are one". This, Witt believes, is what prompted Shakespeare to write Sonnet 109 as a sort of apology for renouncing the friendship between him and his lover after his lover "granted favor to