Faculty of Arts,
Chulalongkorn University
Sonnet
116
(1609)
William
Shakespeare
(1564–1616)
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 |
5 |
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; |
10 |
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. |
|
Sonnet 116 Notes
1 Let me not:
- may I never; I hope that I shall not (Duncan-Jones 342)
2 Admit
impediments: cf. "speaking unto the persons that shall be married,
he [the priest] shall say I require and charge you both, as ye will answer
at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be
disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be
lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it." ("The
Form of Solemnization of Matrimony," The Book of
Common Prayer 1662)
2 impediment:
- impediment (Online
Etymology Dictionary)
c. 1400, from Old French empedement or directly from Latin impedimentum
"hindrance," from impedire "impede," literally "to
shackle the feet," from assimilated form of in- "into, in" (from
PIE root *en "in") + pes (genitive pedis) "foot,"
from PIE root *ped- "foot.")
3 alter:
- alter (Online
Etymology Dictionary)
late 14c., "to change (something), make different in some way," from Old
French alterer "to change, alter," from Medieval Latin alterare
"to change," from Latin alter "the other (of the two),"
from PIE root *al- (1) "beyond" + comparative suffix -ter
(as in other). Intransitive sense "to become otherwise" first recorded
1580s.
4 remover, remove:
- remove (Online
Etymology Dictionary)
early 14c., "move, take away, dismiss," from Old French removoir "move,
stir; leave, depart; take away," from Latin removere "move back
or away, take away, put out of view, subtract," from re- "back,
away" + movere "to move" (from PIE root *meue- "to push
away").
7 bark:
- bark (Oxford
Dictionary)
archaic, literary
A ship or boat.
‘Our NOVA team, which coalesced in Giza last night, was immersed in that
story today as we examined and filmed the famous Solar Barque of
Khufu.’
9 Time's fool:
- Something mocked by Time, because Time has power over it (Duncan-Jones
342)
10 compass:
- compass (Online
Etymology Dictionary)
c. 1300, "space, area, extent, circumference," from Old French compas
"circle, radius; size, extent; pair of compasses" (12c.), from compasser
"to go around, measure (with a compass); divide equally," from
Vulgar Latin *compassare "to pace out," from Latin com
"with, together" + passus "a step" (from PIE root *pete-
"to spread").
The mathematical instrument for describing circles was so called in
English from mid-14c. The mariners' directional tool (so called since
early 15c.) took the name, perhaps, because it's round and has a point
like the mathematical instrument.
Meaning "limits, boundary" is from 1550s. Sense of "range of notes which
a given voice or instrument can produce" is from 1590s.
11 his: Time's
12 doom:
Doomsday; the Last Judgment; death
- doom (Online
Etymology Dictionary)
Middle English doome, from Old English dom "a law,
statute, decree; administration of justice, judgment; justice, equity,
righteousness," from Proto-Germanic *domaz (source also of Old
Saxon and Old Frisian dom, Old Norse domr, Old High
German tuom "judgment, decree," Gothic doms "discernment,
distinction"), perhaps from PIE root *dhe- "to set, place, put,
do" (source also of Sanskrit dhaman- "law," Greek themis
"law," Lithuanian domė "attention").
Originally in a neutral sense but sometimes also "a decision determining
fate or fortune, irrevocable destiny." A book of laws in Old English was
a dombec. Modern adverse sense of "fate, ruin, destruction"
begins early 14c. and is general after c. 1600, from doomsday and the finality of the Christian
Judgment. Crack of doom is the last trump, the signal for the
dissolution of all things.
13 upon me proved:
- proved against me; or proved (to be error) with reference to myself
(Duncan-Jones 343)
Paraphrase
Let
me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.
|
|
Let me not admit impediments to the marriage of true minds.
I would never concede that there are obstacles to the marriage of
true minds.
|
Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or
bends with the remover to remove. |
|
Love is not love if
it alters when it finds alterations, or changes
|
Line by Line
Let
me not to the marriage of true minds |
|
I would never concede that there are obstacles to the marriage of |
Admit
impediments. Love is not love |
|
true minds. |
Which
alters when it alteration finds, |
|
|
Or
bends with the remover to remove. |
|
|
O
no! it is an ever-fixed mark |
5
|
|
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; |
10 |
|
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. |
|
|
The Sonnet Form
A short poem consisting of fourteen lines, of which the rhymes are adjusted
by a particular rule. It is not very suitable to the English language, and
has not been used by any man of eminence since Milton [...]
—Samuel Johnson, "
Sonnet,"
Dictionary of the English Language,
vol. 4, n. p., 1818.
The sonnet is in every regard different from the ballad. It is of a fixed
length and meter,--fourteen iambic pentameters. It is a foreign importation
and has been used exclusively by the literary class; the ballad is
indigenous and belongs primarily to the people. The sonnet is never recited
or sung, though its Italian original, "sonnetto," means little song, and
there are no anonymous sonnets. (107)
[...]
The sonnet is well adapted to the presentation of two related thoughts,
whether the relation be that of contrast or of parallelism, but it is so
short that the body of thought must be condensed and striking, lucidly
presented and yet of far-reaching suggestiveness. The technical difficulties
of the form are also very great, which, indeed, makes the perfect ones the
more satisfying. Sonnet beauty depends on symmetry and asymmetry both, for
the parts are unequal in length and different in form and melody. (143)
—Charles F. Johnson, "
The Sonnet,"
Forms of English Poetry,
American Book Company, 1904, pp. 107–45.
Vocabulary
form; structure
sonnet
quatrain
couplet
line
rhyme
rhyme scheme
allusion
repetition
diction
imagery
Study Questions
- Read Michael Schoenfeldt's Introduction to his edited volume A
Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets, and a couple of
contributions therein: Stephen Booth's "The Value of the Sonnets" and Helen
Vendler's "Formal Pleasure in the Sonnets," as
well as Vendler's Introduction to her own The Art of
Shakespeare's Sonnets (all Chula access). What
information about the form and Shakespeare’s use of it from
these essays strikes you the most?
- If this sonnet is a response to
a comment made, what is the likely comment or statement
spoken?
- Consider the diction used to
describe what love is not. How are they different from those
describing what love is?
- What threats against true love
does the speaker of sonnet 116 enumerate? Each conceptual
danger seems to suggest or refer to a real-world situation
or scenario. What might they be?
- The quatrains build toward a
final couplet. What is the speaker's argument? Explain the
developmental (logical, syntactic, literary, rhetorical,
metrical) steps taken to reach the conclusion.
|
Sample Student Responses to William
Shakespeare's sonnet 116
Response 1:
Student
Name
2202242
Introduction to the Study of English Poetry
Acharn
Puckpan Tipayamontri
July 3,
2009
Reading
Response 1
Title
Text.
Text.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 116 ["Let me not to the marriage of
true minds"]. Shakespeare's Sonnets, edited
by Katherine Duncan-Jones, Arden Shakespeare, 1997,
p. 343.
|
|
William
Shakespeare |
-
Internet
Shakespeare Editions (Plays & Poems, Life
& Times, Performance, Resources, Search, Site
Map)
-
Mr.
William Shakespeare and the Internet
(Life and Times, Criticism, Sources for Shakespeare's
Works)
-
The
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (Outline
of Shakespeare's Life, What
Did Shakespeare Look Like?)
-
Shakespeare
Resource Center (Shakespeare's Language,
Shakespeare's Will, Authorship Debate, Reading List,
Elizabethan England)
|
Reference
Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare's
Sonnets. Yale UP, 1977.
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare's
Sonnets. Edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, 1997, Arden Shakespeare,
1998.
Vendler, Helen. The Art of
Shakespeare's Sonnets. Belknap P, 1997.
Further Reading
Crystal, David, and Ben
Crystal. Shakespeare's Words: A
Glossary and Language Companion. Penguin, 2002.
[Arts
Reference PR2892
C957S]
Crystal, David. Think
on My Words: Exploring Shakespeare's Language. Cambridge UP,
2008.
[Arts PR3072
C957T 2008]
Kermode, Frank. Shakespeare's
Language. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
[Arts PR3072
K39S]
Shakespeare, William. The
Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint. Edited by John Kerrigan, Penguin,
1986.
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Last updated August 23, 2020