William Shakespeare: Sonnet 116
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.
Oh 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 heighth 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 ho urs and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Tasks
1. Comprehension
Summarise what the speaker of Sonnet 116 is concerned with.
2. Analysis
Analyse the sonnet with regard to its central ideas. Take the foflowing aspects into consideration:
- the way the content and the structure of the sonnet back up each other
- the use of imagery and other stylistic devices
- typical Elizabethan / Shakespearean ideas or concepts
You have a choice here. Choose one of the foflowing tasks:
3a) Evaluation: Comment
Do you agree with the speaker's idea of love? Explain and discuss it.
or
3b) Evaluation: Re-creation of text
Imagine you are the speaker of sonnet 116. You are delivering a speech in Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, in which you convey the sonnet's message about love to your listeners. "Rewrite" Sonnet 116 by turning it into a speech!
2 . .impediments Let me never find any reasons why two people who truly love each other should not be together. - 4 remove changewhen the beloved person goes away - 5 mark land mark or star - 8 be can be -10 bendingsickle's compass the range of the scythe thatchanges (destroys) everything - 12 bears it out Iasts, endures -13 If this be error and upon me praved If this is wrang and someone canprove that -14 never writ I have never written
Lösungshinweise
1. Comprehension
• Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 deals with the immortality of true love.
• In the first quatrain, the speaker states that real love is stable and does not change all the time.
• The second and third quatrains reveal the speaker's opinion that love is something strang which can neither be shaken by tempests nor destroyed bytime and death.
• In the couplet, the speaker comes to the conclusion that his opinion about love must be right.
2. Analysis
• The sonnet's structure and its content back up each other. Examples:
- The three quatrains form one unit: They deal with wh at real love is not (cf. first and third quatrain) and what it is (cf. second quatrain).
- A turning-point after the first quatrain is indicated by the exclamation "Oh no!" (I 5). It introduces the speaker's explanation of what real love ~ likeafter he has described what it is not.
- The couplet is separated from the rest of the sonnet with a full stop in l.12. It contains the essence of the sonnet, the conclusion: If the speaker'scomprehension of love is wrong, he has never written anything and no onehas ever loved anyone. As this it not possible, it follows that hiscomprehension of love must be right.
• Shakespeare employs imagery to clarify his message.
Examples:
- When the speaker explains what real love is (second quatrain) he uses an extended metaphor, picturing love as a fixed star providing security andorientation in storms and tempests, which stand for hard times in life.
- In l.19ff love and time are personified to create a vivid mental image in the readers' minds. Love is pictured as a human being whose outer appearanceis destroyed by time. Time is depicted as a monster destroying beauty. Still,it is said that "Love's not Time's fool" indicating that love is superior to timeas its essence is not transient.
• Shakespeare makes use of various rhetorical devices to underline the content of his sonnet. Examples:
- In the first quatrain there are a lot of repetitions of the same or similar words, e.g. "Love is not love" (l.2), "alters [ ... ] alteration" (l.3), "remover [ ... ]remove" (I. 4). All of them reflect the central contrast of the sonnet: Love vs.change.
- This contrast is also illustrated by the antithesis in ll.11f: "Love alters not [ ... ] / But bears it out [ ... ]"
- The couplet implies a logical trick: It says that if the poet is wrong in his assumptions, he has never written the sonnet and no one has ever loved. Asthis is impossible - because the sonnet, for example, is already there – hemust be right.
• In Shakespeare's sonnet 116,typical Elizabethan and Shakespearean ideas and concepts can be found.
Examples:
- Typically, Shakespeare's sonnets deal with love and transience. So does sonnet 116.The idea that love can defeat time is also a typical concept.
- Metaphors referring to a sea voyage were often employed in the Elizabethan time.
3. a) Evaluation: Comment
When considering Shakespeare's Sonnet 116,the question arises whether the speaker's idea of beauty is appropriate.
3. b) Evaluation: Re-creation of text
My dear listeners,
Today I would like to talk to you about love - about true love. True love, which does not change on occasion and it does not chance when the beloved one disappears.Oh no, ladies and gentlemen! It is like a fixed star showing sailors of old their waythrough storms and tempests. And even though we can measure its height, we willnever fully understand how precious it ls. Have you ever been wondering whatcould be so strong that it could even defeat time? Aren't you afraid of death hacking everything away with its scythe? Of course you are. There is nothing wecan do about it, nothing in the world can defeat transience. Except for true love.And if this is not true, I have not delivered this speech - and no person has everloved.
I thankyou.