ABOUT "SONNET 116" of William Shakespeare
...vented this speaker--put forth an ideal of love, rock-steady, as constant as the stars, outlasting time. Perhaps a more probable theme for this poem is that this ideal love is the only one really worth pursuing because it is solid. So the theme statement for a work of art might be one sentence, but it must be the kind of statement that echoes the major implications of the work. It must capture the image of life that inspired the work. Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments,love is not love /Which alters when it alteration findes/Or bends with the remouer to remoue/---let me not admit impedimends to the marrige of true minds .Love which alters is not love ,bends to remove with the remover. The negative wish, if that is how it might be best described, almost reads like the poet's injunction against himself to prevent him from admitting something which he was on the point of conceding. Perhaps he was being told frequently by others, and the beloved himself, that love could not last for ever, that there were impediments, that there was change and alteration, loss and physical decay, all of which militate against true love. And finally, as an act of defiance, he insists that it is not as others see it, that love can surmount all these obstacles, that although nothing can last forever, yet true love can last and hold out until the final reckoning. O no,it is an ever fixed marke/That lookes on tempests and is neuer shaken/ It is the star to euery wandring barke/Whose worth's unknown,although his higth be taken--- constant love like ever-fixed mark , also like North Star,never change!although its angle of elevation above the horizon could be measured. The height of the Pole star above the horizon at its zenith was a guide to the ship's latitude. The measurement would probably have been done with a quadrant.The true nature and value of which is unknown. Love's not Times foole,though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickles compass come/Loue alters not with his breefe houres and weekes/ But beares it out euen to the edge of doome:--- Love would never mocked by time.Though all mortal beauty are easy cut down by time,love would never change,it can endure untill doomsday. If this be error and upon me proued/I neuer writ,nor no man euer loued---if my claim that love lasts for ever is erroneous,I have never written anything, and no man has ever loved (even though he believed himself to be in love). The fact that there is no logical connection between love's eternal status and whether or not the poet has written anything, or men think themselves to be in love, is largely irrelevant, because the poem has by now made its seemingly irrefutable claim. The weakness of the concluding couplet does contribute to a slight sense of disappointment, because the preceding lines are so vibrant with life and love. Sonnet 116, seems a meditative attempt to define love, independent of reciprocity, fidelity, and eternal beauty: “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle’s compass come.” After all his uncertainties and apologies, Sonnet 116 leaves little doubt that the poet is in love with love. The essence of love and friendship for the poet, apparently, is recipro...