Understanding Shakespeare: The Sonnets by Robert A. Albano - HTML preview

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has the best qualities of each gender. This line, in a sense, introduces the comparison that follows between the young man and beautiful women. The speaker wants to assert that the young man is superior to women (similar to the technique he use in "Sonnet 18" when he compared the young man to a summer's day).

A chart may also help here to outline the comparisons and contrasts in this sonnet:

 

A Beautiful Woman      The Young Man

A Gentle Heart      A Gentle Heart

Inconstant in Love      Constant in Love ("shifting change" in heart)

Bright Eyes      Brighter Eyes

Fickle ("rolling eyes")      Not Fickle

 

The speaker is thereby indicating that the young man has the positive qualities of a woman but none of her negative qualities.

In the last three lines of the octet, the speaker describes the qualities of the young man's beauty that no other man or woman possesses. (1) Any object he looks upon turns golden (line 6). In other words, just by looking at an object or another person, he enriches that object or person. He makes that object or person seem nobler or better or more meaningful than it actually is. This is quite assuredly how the speaker must feel when he is in the presence of the young man. (2) The young man's skin coloring (or "hue") is such that it seems the perfect blend of all other colors. And (3) any man or woman who gazes upon him is