SONNET 116 – PARAPHRASE

Let me not declare any reasons why two

True-minded people should not be married. Love is not love
Which changes when it finds a change in circumstances,
Or bends from its firm stand even when a lover is unfaithful:
Oh no! it is a lighthouse
That sees storms but it never shaken;
Love is the guiding north star to every lost ship,
Whose value cannot be calculated, although its altitude can be
measured.
Love is not at the mercy of Time, though physical beauty
Comes within the compass of his sickle.
Love does not alter with hours and weeks,
But, rather, it endures until the last day of life.
If I am proved wrong about these thoughts on love
Then I recant all that I have written, and no man has ever [truly] loved.

Sonnet 116: Interpretation

(Lines 1-2) Although legal marriages have barriers to prevent them

[like close genes or being currently married], I don't believe in any
such barriers to the union between true lovers.
(2-3) Love isn't really love if it changes when we notice our beloved
has changed.
(4-5) Love doesn't vary when someone tries to lure us away from our
beloved.
(5-6) No way! Love is like a rock, and storms can't undermine it.
(7-8) Love is a constant guide to us as we sail through life, but we can't
really see its true value even if we can quantify love somehow.
(9-10) Love doesn't vary with time, even if the glow of youthfulness
passes from our beloved's face.
(11-12) Love doesn't vary because of time; it stays constant even until
death.
(13-14) If I'm wrong about love, then I never wrote anything
[worthwhile since almost all my writings are about love somehow] and
nobody has been in love.
Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 116

What’s he saying?

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love

is not love”

I will not allow myself to admit that true love has any restrictions. Love
is not real love

“Which alters when it alteration finds / Or bends with the remover to

remove:”

If it changes in response to change, or if it allows itself to be changed

by the one who is changing:

“O no! it is an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never

shaken;”

Not at all! Love is a permanent mark that persists unshaken despite

the harsh winds of change;
“It is the star to every wandering bark / Whose worth’s unknown,
although his height be taken.”

Love is the guiding, constant star for every wandering ship, a fixed
point whose nature is unknown, although its height can be measured.

“Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his
bending sickle’s compass come:”

True love is not subject to the changes of Time, although beautiful

faces do fall victim to the sweep of Time’s curved scythe:

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks / But bears it out even
to the edge of doom.”

Love does not change with Time’s hours and weeks, but endures
through Time right up until the day of reckoning.

“If this be error and upon me proved / I never writ, nor no man ever
loved.”

If the above is false and proved against me, it would be as impossible

as if I had never written anything, or if nobody had ever loved.

Why is he saying it?

Sonnet 116 is one of the most famous of the sonnets for its stalwart
defense of true love. The sonnet has a relatively simple structure, with
each quatrain attempting to describe what love is (or is not) and the
final couplet reaffirming the poet’s words by placing his own merit on
the line. Note that this is one of the few sonnets in the fair lord
sequence that is not addressed directly to the fair lord; the context of
the sonnet, however, gives it away as an exposition of the poet’s deep
and enduring love for him.

The opening lines of the sonnet dive the reader into the theme at a
rapid pace, accomplished in part by the use of enjambment – the
continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of poetry to the next
without any form of pause, e.g., “Let me not to the marriage of true
minds / Admit impediments ...” This first quatrain asserts that true love
is immortal and unchanging: it neither changes on its own nor allows
itself to be changed, even when it encounters changes in the loved
one. Quatrain two embarks on a series of seafaring metaphors to
further establish the permanence of true love: in line 5 it is an “ever-
fixed mark,” a sea mark that navigators could use to guide their
course; in line 7 it is a steadfast star (the North Star, perhaps), whose
height we are able to measure (as with a quadrant) although we may
know nothing of its nature (the science of stars had hardly progressed
by Shakespeare’s time). Both of these metaphors emphasize the
constancy and dependability of true love.

Finally, quatrain three nails home the theme, with love’s undying
essence prevailing against the “bending sickle” of Time. Time’s “hours
and weeks” are “brief” compared to love’s longevity, and only some
great and final destruction of apocalyptic proportions could spell its
doom. Note here the reference back to the nautical imagery of
quatrain two with the use of the word “compass” in line 10.

Sonnet 116 closes with a rather hefty wager against the validity of the
poet’s words: he writes that if what he claims above is proven untrue,
then he “never writ, nor no man ever loved.”
In comparison with most other sonnets, sonnet 116 strikes readers as
relatively simple. The metaphors are reasonably transparent, and the
theme is quickly and plainly apparent. The overarching sentiment of
true love’s timeless and immutable nature is presented and developed
in the first eight lines, but there is no twist at the third quatrain - rather
a continuation of the theme. Even the couplet is but a simple
statement like “there you have it.” The simplicity is noteworthy, and
perhaps it was deliberate: Shakespeare’s goal may have been
unaffected candor, sincerity of conviction. It should come as no wonder
that the lines of sonnet 116 often are quoted as Shakespeare’s
authentic definition of love.

Another interesting fact is that this sonnet is found misnumbered (as

119) in all extant copies of the Quarto (early editions were printed in
small books called quartos) but one. Even this fact has produced
speculation about additional encoded meanings.

Elizabethan (Shakespearean) Sonnet, Iambic Pentameter

Let’s tackle the simpler part first: the meter. This sonnet, like all of the other sonnets, and
like Shakespeare’s plays, is written in iambic pentameter. This is a fancy way of
explaining the consistent da-dum, da-dum, da-dum rhythm of the lines; every line has five
two-syllable "feet" (yes, that’s what they’re actually called), or iambs. "Penta" means
"five" in Greek. Each of these feet is one of the "da-dum" – the dum is stressed.
Altogether, every line has ten syllables – five iambs times two syllables per iamb = ten
syllables total. A perfect example is line 5 (italicized syllables are stressed):

O no! It is an ev-er fix-ed mark

Now that we’ve got the meter down, let’s take a look at the form. Sonnet 116 is, well, a
sonnet. The sonnet, a fourteen-line poetic form that originated in medieval Italy, made its
way over to England through the very popular poems of Petrarch, an Italian poet, and
Ronsard, a French one. These European sonnets followed a rhyme scheme referred to
now as the Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet. However, once it got to England in the
sixteenth century, British poets started to shake things up a bit.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are all written in a different rhyme scheme than their Continental
predecessors. The so-called English sonnet is divided into three quatrains (stanzas of four
lines each), which in turn each have two rhymes. The whole poem follows the rhyme
scheme A-B-A-B/ C-D-C-D/ E-F-E-F. In our example, "minds" and "finds" are the "a"
rhyme in stanza 1, and "love" and "remove" are the "b" rhyme; in stanza 2, "mark" and
"bark" are "c," while "shaken" and "taken" are "d," et cetera. Finally, the last two lines
(13 and 14) are grouped together as a couplet, and rhyme with each other – if they were
added on to the scheme we wrote out above, they would be G-G ("proved" and "loved" in
Sonnet 116). Shakespeare wrote so many sonnets of this form that we now commonly
call it the Shakespearean sonnet.

The final characteristic of the sonnet is the turn, or volta. These are really just fancy
words for a simple shift in gears, which usually happens in the first line of the third
quatrain, between lines 8 and 9, when some change in ideas enters into the poem. This
sonnet is no exception to this rule; the turn occurs at "Love’s not Time’s fool…" (9),
where the image of love as a guiding star is suddenly replaced by a personification of
love as an eternal, everlasting force that resists death, introducing the idea of the
immortality of love.