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The figure commonly known as the “Fair Youth” is the first of the two love objects the speaker addresses in the sonnets. The Fair Youth is unique as an object of devotion in a sonnet sequence like this. Whereas that role would typically be played by a young woman, here it is played by a young man. Furthermore, his fair complexion and young age also stand in contrast to the Dark Lady, so-called in the critical tradition due to her darker skin and more mature age. The speaker’s address to the Fair Youth is surprisingly lengthy, spanning the first 126 sonnets. He begins with an introductory sequence (sonnets 1–17) in which he urges the Fair Youth to reproduce his beautiful image by having children. The Fair Youth then remains at the center of attention throughout the long sequence that follows (18–126), which develops a dominant theme related to time’s destructive cruelty. Here, the vulnerability of the Fair Youth’s beauty becomes a point of melancholy fixation for the speaker, who also has cause to consider his own more advanced age. The speaker’s focus on abstractions of beauty and time suggests that his affection for the Fair Youth, though arguably tinged with sexual attraction, is primarily a form of spiritual love.
The Fair Youth’s gender has long been a source of fascination for critics, who take his dominating presence as a possible sign of the speaker’s bisexuality. But perhaps more significant than the question of sexuality is the gender-based differences in how the speaker treats the two objects of his desire. For instance, whereas the Dark Lady’s infidelity will deeply bother the speaker despite his own admitted infidelities, in Sonnets 33 and 35 the speaker expressly forgives the Fair Youth’s dalliances with others. This is surprising, especially considering that in these same poems the speaker implies that the Fair Youth is using his youthful allure to manipulate him. Yet the speaker accepts the Fair Youth’s evident fickleness, and in Sonnet 20 he even praises him for not being false like women are. To make matters of gender more complicated, it’s also worth noting that the speaker’s attraction to the Fair Youth seems related to the young man’s feminine appearance. As the speaker puts it in Sonnet 20: “A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted / Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion.” In this way, the Fair Youth’s allure is linked to the way he embodies both masculine and feminine traits.
