VCCS Litonline

Sonnet 116

1 Let me not to the marriage of true minds

2 Admit impediments . Love is not love

3 Which alters when it alteration finds,

4 Or bends with the remover to remove.

5 Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark

6 That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

7 It is the star to every wandering bark ,

8 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken .

9 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

10 Within his bending sickle's compass come.

11 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

12 But bears it out even to the edge of doom .

13 If this be error and upon me proved,

14 I never writ , nor no man ever loved .

Annemarie Muth points out that this sonnet is not spoken directly to a "you," as many other Shakespearean sonnets are. So it is basically like a "soliloquy" in that Shakespeare seems to be talking to himself and expressing his own views rather than putting on a mask, or persona.

Also, the soliloquy sonnets, according to David Weiser's Mind in Character, focus on self-discovery, in this case of a universal--love's constancy. Irony, in this sonnet, points to the shortcomings of the poet's own experience, that he hasn't really known such constant love, which Muth characterizes as his "tragic view of love" and says Weiser calls Shakespeare's "perfect definition" of love. This sonnet contradicts 119, which claims that unfaithfulness actually strengthens love: "ruin'd love when built anew/ Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater." Sonnet 116, on the other hand, holds up love's "steadfastness in the face of . . . betrayal," defining by counter- examples and by examples.

It's as if Shakespeare's belief in fidelity develops as the sonnet goes on. The personification of "fickle love" as one who "alters" and "bends" gives way in the second quatrain to positive images of guiding mariners. While the lover is the "faithful star," the inconstant beloved is "wand'ring," perhaps taking love for granted ("whose worth's unknown").

The third quatrain sounds like a creed on love's perseverance. In the final couplet, Shakespeare bets his career on the rightness of his assertion about love--and he despairs if there is not constant love somewhere.

Source: Annemarie S. Muth, in an essay on "Sonnet 116," in Poetry for Students, Gale, 1998. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. <http://galenet.galegroup.com> 11/29/04

For a more subtle interpretation by Linda Gregerson, click here to visit The Atlantic.

For a variation on these interpretations, click here to visit Shakespeare Online. Scroll down below the paraphrase there to the interpretation, which includes an alternative view of the "mark." The gushy syllable-counting praise at the end ignores the feminine rhyme (with 11-syllable lines) in lines 6 and 8.


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