Sonnet 120
# Sonnet 120

Sonnet 120 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

## Structure

Sonnet 120 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 4th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

Four lines (5, 7, 9, and 11) have a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending, as for example:

    / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. (×) = extrametrical syllable.

## Interpretations

* Paul Rhys, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)
