Interesting interpretation - This is a sonnet I have spent many years trying to understand fully - for now let me comment on just one line

"A man in hue, all hues I his controlling"

This is a pivotal line in the sonnet - Hue was a common word for colour or shades of colour often used by Shakespeare. It doesn't make sense now, because we no longer have Sumptuary laws - but in Elizabethan times there were strict rules about what colours people could wear - it was important that connomers were not able to pass themselves off as nobility, so only the nobility could wear all colours and only the royal family and the higher ranking nobility could wear Purple.

One person stands out as a result - Henry Wriothesley the 3rd Earl of Southampton who would become Shakespeares patron and to whom the two long poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) were both dedicated. As an earl, young Henry would have "all hues in his controlling," and we know from paintings of him as a young man and one depicting him as a woman, that he fits the description at the beginning of this sonnet perfectly - This to me is the most compelling evidence that Henry was the "Fair Youth" and other research I have conducted indicates that the second half of this sonnet  expresses Shakespeares unrequited love for this effeminate man - someone today we might consider a Trans woman.

Shakespeare spent his life  working with young men who dressed as women - and we know from research done on this topic and the Bejing Opera who also had men/boys playing female roles that many boy actors lived much of their lives off stage as women. Shakespeare also lived at a time of expreme oppression of L:GBTQ people - Elizabeth 1 had reenacted the Buggery Act and, although few people were charged, it was a constant threat - and the reason why Shakespeares love of Henry would always remain unrequited. The sonnets were not written for public consumption and were not published until very late in Shakespeares life.

I have written a recent article on Shakespeares lost years and the LGBTQ culture in 16th century yu may fid interesting - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uncovering-hidden-threads-shakespeares-lost-years-lgbtq-rikki-arundel-zwote/?trackingId=VN0SOWizkwt9ZlyPZjpnfg%3D%3D

Thank you for your interpretations - especially regarding the lost pronunciations of words and how their meanings can be interpreted with implied puns.

"Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth", makes it seem like the young man's gaze turns everything it sees into gold therefore beautifying the "Object" or making the "Object" more valuable. But it also made me think of King Midas who turned everyone he touched into gold therefore stopping their motion/movements; maybe the gilding part doesn't refer to gold specifically but rather how anyone who makes contact with the young man's eyes stops dead in their track, to look at him, mesmerized by his beauty. Also, the line "And for a woman wert thou first created " seems like Shakespeare reversed the creation story from Genesis.

The eye gilding the object (or person) it gazes on is observation that neatly captures the feeling one has when someone (usually of the opposite sex) looks at them for the first time. The "s/he noticed me!" feeling is one known to just about everyone. It is not condescending like the look of "false women."

I love these analyses so much! Thank you!

One of the best sonnet poem out of all of them

You're outstanding doing this!!! So clear and enjoyable! Congratulations 🎉

Thanks 🌹

Adam, I find your commentary so clear, to the point, and helpful, and can't wait to delve deeper into your videos. I have one small quibble: you appear to properly resist imposing contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality when it comes to addressing the question of whether Shakespeare's sonnets to a young man were homoerotic or homosexual, yet, in this commentary, you twice use the contemporary term, and somewhat gratuitously I feel, 'sexism', which feels a bit 'dissonant' to me in this context. Nor does that critique really help to illuminate Shakespeare's intent and meaning.

Good explanation

excelent poem by wiliam shakespare

This was so helpful !!! Thanks for this ♥️

Do we know something about how rhythmically sonnets were read?

Do you think he was referring to his self in these poems? Perhaps he's saying to himself instead of having kids he's gonna focus on his work. Kinda of an inner conflict he's working out in the 3rd person.

You say sexism, but I’d like to push back against that. Back then they were much more practical people. There is a practicality for women to have the hearts swooned. Back then many men would go to war not come back. And a higher mortality rate. It’s a gift to the human race that women have soft hearts that we can speak to. “More true than a woman’s heart” the author says and the reader can take the view that that is sexist. On the reverse one can see the practicality that women have. And it’s easy to forget the burden of responsibility for women is to continue the human race, and their culture, nourishing, and raising people, a  heart is malleable from them, is a wonderful thing, although it can flutter in miss direction sometimes, when its all held to account, we are all better for it. I think we do our ancestors little justice and just assuming the worst. Remember, powerful women existed throughout history. I don’t know why the modern age thinks women were so frail and weak back in ancestry? Have people never heard of Eleanor of Aquitaine? And it just wasn’t noble ranked women either. Peasant women in Britain growing up to control entire armadas of merchant ships. Literally this world was brought into modern fashion by powerful women and powerful men.