Among the first set of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 20 stands out as one of the most forthright in addressing the idea of Shakespeare’s physical relations with the young man. However, the sonnet leaves much open to interpretation, and has therefore been used both to support and refute the idea of Shakespeare as a participant in the homosexual act. While the sonnet does allow for multiple interpretations, critics who try to make the sonnet fit a platonic interpretation seem to be looking at the poem only on a superficial level and ignoring the multiple shades of meaning that support a homosexual reading.
Before the issue of Shakepeare’s possible homosexuality in regards to this sonnet can even be properly addressed, the issue of whom the poem is addressed to must be dealt with. Gender is left deliberately ambiguous throughout the entire sonnet, as “the poet has carefully chosen puns which apply to the male, the female, or both at once, all suitable for praising this epicene creature who unites the best of both sexes within himself at once” (Kolin 10). Throughout the sonnet, there are nine references to women or the female pronoun and only four to men, and the gender of the addressee is only once indicated with the pronoun “he” in line seven.
The second line of the poem best exemplifies this confusion of gender, with the confusing phrase “master mistress.” There are several interpretations of this contradictory line. The poet could be referring to a man serving him as a mistress, or to a mistress who has taken control of the speaker in the manner of a master (Bredbeck 59). Several other lines contain a similar level of confusion, as in lines four to six. These lines allow for two interpretations of the narrative, one, “the speaker is addressing a woman who surpasses the ‘fashion’ of other women, and through her chaste gentility ‘gilds’ the man on whom she ‘gazeth.’” (Bredbeck 59). Yet there is also the possibility that the speaker addresses a man, and that the line “a woman’s gentle heart” is meant as a comparison, suggesting that this is a womanly man.
As within the poem there can be no definite determination, the best clue comes from the greater context. Sonnet 20 falls within the first 126 sonnets, and is therefore classified as one of the “young man” sonnets. Fit within this sequence, the addressee must be a male, despite some attempts by editors throughout the last centuries to change the pronouns and indicate that Shakespeare was addressing a woman. But if Shakespeare is addressing a man, this brings the reader to face the idea of homosexuality, allusions to which are so thinly veiled throughout the poem. There are two main schools of thought on whether Shakespeare was in fact referring to sodomy and a homosexual relationship. Some prefer to see the relationship as purely platonic friendship. However, the sexual side of the sonnet cannot be ignored, and it clearly suggests a more physical intimacy.
Those who take the sonnet’s language without analysis of the many connotations advance a narrative for the poem where Shakespeare is addressing the young man from a purely platonic standpoint. The speaker is interpreted as saying that he loves the man for his heart, but nature has never meant for them to be together physically. Booth takes that stance with his interpretation of the sonnet, saying that “men are like men, and, to put it crudely as Shakespeare does, they don’t fit together; men are unlike women, and they do fit together” (Booth 110).
Similarly, a reading of Sonnet 20 in context with the earlier sonnets can suggest a platonic interpretation of the affection between the poet and the young man. This allows for one reading that takes the sonnet as a vehement denial that the poet’s friendship has anything but “innocent and honorable” intentions (MacKenzie 11). Reading passion as a “outburst of feeling” that is entirely nonsexual in nature removes “any hint of perversion from the sonnet (MacKenzie 11).
Furthermore, when defending the idea of a platonic relationship, some critics say that by choosing to address the poetry to a young man, Shakespeare is merely expressing a desire for the unattainable in the tradition of courtly love. The sexual undertones of the poem are then explained away as but a “predictable extreme” of courtly love in seeking the unattainable (Booth 180). This allows the dismissal of any homosexual implications, and adds an interpretation that Shakespeare’s young man sonnets are to some extent a work of satire mocking courtly love.
However, to merely classify this desire for a man under the category of “courtly” love is to ignore the many differences between Shakespeare’s work and the traditional poetry of courtly romance. The nature of Renaissance writings on courtly love was to dream about attaining that which was believed to be completely unattainable. However, in Shakespeare’s poetry, the implications go beyond the traditional “worship from afar” mentality of courtly love. As one critic wrote, “sonnet 20 may be a poem of courtship, but Shakespeare does not stop there. Unlike most Renaissance poets who write about love, Shakespeare goes on to write about what happens when emotional desire becomes the physical act” (Smith 252). When Shakespeare’s work moves to the level of describing the physical, as certainly sonnet 20 alludes to repeatedly, it can no longer be dismissed as merely courtly love.
Most important to a platonic interpretation of the sonnet is the final couplet. Many critics have put great emphasis on the final couplet as undermining any possible homosexual interpretation of the sonnet. The platonic reading of this couplet affirms, “the young man is for women’s pleasure” (Kolin 10). Therefore the boy’s love and affection is given to the poet, but the sexual enjoyment of him is reserved to women (Hammond 83). This interpretation is best drawn from the use of the verb “use” to draw a distinction between the poet’s love of the youth, and women’s use of him sexually: Mine be thy love, and thy loves use their treasure” (Hammond 66).
However, a more precise reading of this line would suggest that the poet is acknowledging the boy’s right and need to be with women for reproductive purposes, but that does not mean he has abandoned the idea of a sexual relation of his own with the boy. This allows for a homosexual interpretation of the line, such as that championed by one critic, where the speaker is saying “Since you were created to be used as a women (i.e. penetrated), I will be your lover, and others (presumably women) will have to masturbate’” (Bredbeck 60). This interpretation can be made based on the play of words surrounding the rhyming treasure and pleasure.
When this interpretation of the final couplet is taken, other interpretations become apparent for the rest of the sonnet that show a fully developed set of allusions to sex and the physical resolution of the poet and the young man’s relationship. Several sexual puns contribute to the development of this line of thought. The reference in lines three and four to the young man not being “acquainted with shifting change” draws on the pun where “acquaintance” means equipped with a “cunt” (Rubinstein 209) Similarly, in line twelve the phrase “by adding one thing to my purpose nothing” may draw upon the use of the word nothing as slang for women’s private parts. This suggests a highly physical interpretation where the man’s body is as good to the speaker as that of a woman.
Another area where potential sexual innuendo exists is in line seven, “A man in hue, all hues in his controlling.” In the original Quarto version of line seven, the word “Hews” is emphasized and italicized. This draws attention to the word and suggests that Shakespeare wanted the reader to see more than one possible meaning behind the word. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “hew” is an obsolete form of the word “hue,” which means primarily form but also can mean to assume or fake an appearance. Taken in this secondary meaning when juxtaposed with the word false in lines four and five, the emphasis of this word can be taken as an attack on the young man’s truthfulness by the poet, saying that the young man is false as a woman but in a different manner, in his appearance and actions. It can also have a more sexual connotation, implying that the man can take on the “hue” and role of a woman for the speaker.
Another theme of the sonnet that supports a homosexual interpretation is found within the continual references to nature and the creation scene presented in lines ten to thirteen. Here Nature is depicted as “adding a penis to a half finished woman” and in doing so invoking “the specter of sodomy” (Halpern 26). While the poem then makes a “surface argument that this penis stands definitively in the way of sexual contact,” that is a naïve assumption. (Halpern 26). Instead, the penis is incidental and unnecessary in the interactions of the poet and the young man, and therefore the young man’s penis is reserved to women.
With all the undertones of physical relations present in this sonnet, it is not hard to develop a homosexual interpretation where the two have physically consummated their relationship. This also functions within the larger context of the young man sequence, as “we can see in the first twenty sonnets a progression in which the poet’s sexual feelings for the friend, held carefully in check at first, gradually emerge as the poet’s real subject and homosocial desire changes by degrees into homosexual desire” (Smith 248). Whether this reading actually reflects homosexual actions on the part of Shakespeare cannot be determined; however, the speaker of the poem should be interpreted as having experienced homosexual desire, and likely action, with the young man addressed.
Works Cited
Booth, Stephen. An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Yale University Press, New Haven and London: 1969.
Bredbeck, Gregory W. “Tradition and the Individual Sodomite: Barnfield, Shakespeare, and Subjective Desire.” Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Literary Representations in Historical Context. Ed by Claude J. Summers. The Haworth Press, New York, 1992.
Halpern, Richard. Shakespeare’s Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in the Sonnets, Wilde, Freud, and Lacan. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002.
Hammond, Paul. Figuring Sex Between Men from Shakespeare to Rochester. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002.
Kolin, Phillip C. “Shakepeare’s Sonnet 20.” Explicator. 45:1, Fall 1986.
MacKenzie, Barabara A. Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Their Relation to his Life. Maskew Miller Limited, Cape Town, 1946.
Rubinstein, Frankie. A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and their Significance. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1984.
Smith, Bruce R. Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England: A Cultural Poetics. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991.