Sonnet 20 claims that the young man has a woman’s beauty without a woman’s faults, and that since Nature made him a man, the speaker will keep his love while women have the physical use of it.
Sonnet 20: Full Poem
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;
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.
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.
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 20 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 20 Means
Sonnet 20 praises the young man’s beauty as a blend of male and female, then tells a playful story about how Nature made him a man.
The first quatrain says the young man has a woman’s face, painted by Nature rather than by makeup, and a woman’s gentle heart, but without the fickleness the poem conventionally attributes to women. The speaker calls him “the master-mistress of my passion”: the one who rules his feelings and the one who inspires them.
The second quatrain praises his eyes, brighter than women’s and less given to flirtatious glances, which make everything they look at shine. He is a man in appearance, yet he commands every kind of beauty, drawing the eyes of men and amazing the souls of women.
The third quatrain tells the story. Nature first set out to make a woman, but as she worked she fell in love with her creation and added “one thing,” making him a man. That addition defeated the speaker, because the thing she added is of no use to his purpose.
The couplet settles the matter. Since Nature equipped him for women’s pleasure, the speaker will have his love, and women can have the physical enjoyment of it as their treasure.
Sonnet 20 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 20 moves from praise to myth to a settlement, and its themes follow those three steps.
A Beauty Beyond Gender
The opening octave gives the young man the best of what the poem associates with each sex: a woman’s face and gentle heart, a man’s form and constancy. His beauty works on everyone, stealing “men’s eyes” and amazing “women’s souls.” “Master-mistress of my passion” compresses the whole portrait into one phrase that refuses to settle into either term.
Nature’s Joke
The third quatrain turns the young man’s sex into a story. Nature meant to make a woman, fell in love with her work, and added “one thing” at the last moment. The myth is comic, but it lets the speaker admit that something stands between him and the young man, and blame it on Nature’s whim rather than on himself.
Love Set Apart From Use
The couplet divides the young man’s love in two. The speaker claims the love itself; women receive its “use,” its physical expression. Readers have long disagreed about what this division means. Some take it as a clear statement that the speaker’s love is not sexual; others hear a rueful acceptance of what he cannot have. The poem’s wordplay keeps both readings open.
Form and Language
Sonnet 20 is formally unique in the sequence, and its language works on two levels at once.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, but every one of its rhymes is feminine, ending on an extra unstressed syllable: “painted” and “acquainted,” “passion” and “fashion,” “rolling” and “controlling,” “gazeth” and “amazeth,” “created” and “defeated,” “a-doting” and “nothing,” “pleasure” and “treasure.” No other sonnet in the sequence does this on all fourteen lines. The soft endings suit a poem about a beauty that belongs to neither sex alone.
“Master-Mistress”
The compound joins two opposed roles. A master commands; a mistress is loved. The phrase makes the young man both at once, the ruler of the speaker’s passion and its object, and it has become the most quoted phrase in the poem.
Bawdy Wordplay
The last six lines carry a second, sexual meaning under the first. “One thing” refers to the male organ, and “nothing” was Elizabethan slang for the female one, so line 12 sets the two against each other. “Pricked thee out” means “selected you” and puns on the same anatomy. “Use” could mean sexual enjoyment. The puns are not decoration: they let the poem name the physical plainly while the surface stays decorous.
“A Man in Hue”
“Hue” meant form and appearance as well as color. Line 7 says the young man is a man in shape yet holds “all hues,” every kind of beauty, in his control. In the 1609 Quarto the second word is printed “Hews,” with a capital and in italics, a detail that has prompted speculation about a hidden name.
A Closer Reading
The couplet of Sonnet 20 settles the speaker’s love in the vocabulary of the Procreation Sonnets, and by doing so hands the earlier argument back to the women it was always meant for.
Two words in the last line have a history. In the first seventeen sonnets, “use” means the interest a loan earns, and the interest the young man owes is a child. Sonnet 4 scolds him as a “profitless usurer”; Sonnet 6 calls having children a “use” that “is not forbidden usury” and urges him to “treasure thou some place / With beauty’s treasure.” “Use” and “treasure” are the two words the procreation argument was built on.
Sonnet 20 ends on exactly those words: “thy love’s use their treasure.” The use, the physical love that makes children, goes to women, as the Procreation Sonnets always demanded. What the speaker keeps is the one thing those poems never mentioned: “thy love.” The division is not only a way of setting desire aside. It reconciles the speaker’s new feeling with the old argument. The young man can still marry and have heirs, and the speaker can still love him.
That reading also explains the poem’s tone. It is witty rather than wounded because it has found an arrangement in which no one’s claim is cancelled: Nature has her man, women have their use, and the speaker has the love. Whether the arrangement holds is a question the rest of the sequence answers less cheerfully, but in Sonnet 20 it is offered with a smile.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 20, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 20 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets, whom the speaker calls “the master-mistress of my passion.” His identity is unknown.
What Does “Master-Mistress of My Passion” Mean?
The one who both rules the speaker’s love and inspires it. The phrase combines the male role of master with the female role of beloved mistress, matching the poem’s portrait of a beauty that is both.
Is Sonnet 20 About Love Between Men?
It expresses intense love for a young man, and its wordplay openly acknowledges the body. What the couplet says about physical desire is debated: some readers see a clear statement that the love is not sexual, others a rueful acceptance of what cannot be had.
What Is Unusual About the Rhymes in Sonnet 20?
Every line ends in a feminine rhyme, with an extra unstressed syllable after the rhyming sound. No other sonnet in the sequence does this on all fourteen lines.
Why Is “Hews” Capitalized in the Original Edition?
The 1609 Quarto prints line 7 as “A man in hew all Hews,” with the second word capitalized and in italics. Some readers have taken it as a hidden reference to a person’s name, an idea Oscar Wilde built into his story “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” There is no evidence that settles it.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets that help explain what Sonnet 20 settles, and what it praises.