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.
[3] Scholars have suggested countless motivations or means of organizing Shakespeare's sonnets in a specific sequence or system of grouping.
A number of academics believe the sonnets may be woven into some form of complex narrative, while Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells confidently assert that the sonnets are "better thought of as a collection than a sequence, since…the individual poems do not hang together from beginning to end as a single unity…Though some of the first 126 poems in the collection unquestionably relate to a young man, others could relate to either a male or female.
[4] One of the most famous accounts to raise the issue of homoeroticism in this sonnet is Oscar Wilde's short story "The Portrait of Mr.
Philip C. Kolin, of the University of Southern Mississippi, interprets several lines from the first two quatrains of Sonnet 20 as written by a homosexual figure.
Kolin also argues that, "numerous, though overlooked, sexual puns run throughout this indelicate panegyric to Shakespeare's youthful friend.
"[6] He suggests the reference to the youth's eyes, which gild the objects upon which they gaze, may also be a pun on "gelding…The feminine beauty of this masculine paragon not only enhances those in his sight but, with the sexual meaning before us, gelds those male admirers who temporarily fall under the sway of the feminine grace and pulchritude housed in his manly frame.
"[6] Amy Stackhouse of Iona University[7] explains that the form of the sonnet (written in iambic pentameter with an extra-unstressed syllable on each line) lends itself to the idea of a "gender-bending" model.
This transsexual, a cynosure for both admiring sexes, has masculine and feminine traits"[10] This idea of nature is also reflected in Philip C. Kolin's analysis of the last part of the poem as well.
Friedman believes Sonnet 20 is written by a masculine heterosexual figure involved in a heteronormative friendship, and that the various puns and language used historically related to sports present during Shakespeare's time.
For example, he argues, “the terms ‘Master’ and ‘Mistress’[of line 2], used interchangeably to refer, as here, to something which is an object of passionate interest of a center of attention, come from the game of bowls.”[12] He continues to build connections between several phrases and, what he believes to be, references to terms used in gambling, more specifically in the game of bowls, which involves the rolling of a dice.