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Sonnet 116 – William Shakespeare



Sonnet 116 was published in 1609 by William Shakespeare. It is a Shakespearean sonnet. It has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet.

Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman.

William Shakespeare (1564 –1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's outstanding dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon".

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

In the first quatrain, the poet says that love is “marriage of true minds”. It is perfect and unchanging. It does not change; when it finds changes in the person you love.
“Love is not love which alters
When it alteration finds”

In the second quatrain, Love is presented through a metaphor of “Star”, which guides people to find way when they are lost.
In the third quatrain, poet explains what love we can is not. Beauty fades away with time. For example – “Rosy lips and pink cheeks”. Love doesn’t change with hours and week.
In the last couplet, the poet challenges his own understanding of what love is. He says that if his understanding has some errors, then he must never write nor any man is ever in love.

This sonnet presents the extreme ideal qualities of love. In the modern times, the concept of love has changed. We can interpret this poem from modern point of view.

Reference:-

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