Department of English

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:


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:



3  alter:

4  remover, remove:


7  bark:


9  Time's fool:


10  compass:


11  his: Time's


12  doom: Doomsday; the Last Judgment; death


13  upon me proved:



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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

  
 


 

 

 

Links

 

 

William Shakespeare

 

 

 

 

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