Sonnet 20

Song Meaning

This sonnet opens with a striking image of a beloved whose beauty is so profound it seems "Nature's own hand painted." The narrator immediately establishes this person as the "master-mistress of my passion," a phrase that hints at a complex, perhaps even contradictory, object of desire. The initial description emphasizes a gentle heart, contrasting it with the "shifting change" and "false women's fashion" of others, suggesting a perceived authenticity and steadfastness in the beloved. The central tension arises from the beloved's ambiguous gender and the narrator's possessive desire. The beloved possesses an eye "less false in rolling" and a "man in hue," yet was "first created" for women. Nature, in its creation process, apparently "fell a-doting" and added something that ultimately "defeats" the narrator's original purpose, implying a deviation from a purely feminine design that complicates the narrator's claim. This addition, while thwarting the narrator's initial intent, also seems to enhance the beloved's allure, stealing "men's eyes and women's souls." The most fascinating aspect of the craft is the deliberate blurring of gender and the narrator's reaction to it. The beloved is described with feminine qualities ("woman's face," "gentle heart") but also masculine ones ("man in hue"), and is both "master-mistress." The narrator acknowledges Nature's "addition" that made the beloved a source of "women's pleasure," a development that seems to have thwarted the narrator's exclusive claim. This complex interplay of attraction and frustration, rooted in the beloved's unique, perhaps androgynous, nature, fuels the poem's emotional core. Ultimately, the effectiveness of these lyrics lies in their intricate exploration of desire that transcends conventional boundaries. The narrator’s struggle to reconcile the beloved's created purpose with their own intense passion, especially after Nature's "addition," creates a powerful, almost defiant, declaration. The final couplet, "Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure," is a masterful assertion of possessive love, attempting to carve out a personal claim even as the beloved is acknowledged as a source of pleasure for others.