5350775
Description
Flashcards by Aimee Vickers, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Aimee Vickers
almost 8 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| Summary | he poet makes his point clear from line 1: true love always perseveres, despite any obstacles that may arise. He goes on to define love by what it doesn’t do, claiming that it stays constant, even though people and circumstances may change. Love never dies, even when someone tries to destroy it. Rather than being something that comes and goes, love is eternal and unchanging – so much so that the poet compares it to the North Star, which never moves in the sky and guides lost ships home. This metaphorical star is mysterious and perhaps incomprehensible, even though we can chart its location. Mortality isn’t an issue for true love, which doesn’t fade even when youth and beauty disappear. Love doesn’t change as the days go by; rather, it remains strong until the lover’s dying day. Finally, the poet stakes his own reputation on this definition, boldly claiming that if anyone can prove him wrong, he’ll eat his words. That is to say, if this idea of love turns out to be wrong, then he’ll take back everything he wrote and it’ll be as though it never existed. Furthermore, if this specific p |
| 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love' | First of all, the poem alludes to marriage, and to the actual marriage ceremony, which remains basically unchanged; the word "impediment" is lifted straight from the official Church of England wedding service. The "marriage of true minds" is a metaphor for true love. It's not certain whether this refers specifically to platonic love or sexual love; instead, we are intended to see it as prefect love. The Poet uses the word "minds" instead of anything like "hearts" or "bodies." This is to let us know that this perfect love is the partnership of two thinking, willing individuals, who aren’t simply driven by emotions or hormones. In the enjambment between "minds" and "Admit" – by putting the idea of obstruction in the second line, the Poet doesn’t even admit the word "impediment" into the same line as the phrase "the marriage of true minds." |
| 'Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove' | The poet defines love by what it's not. The repetition here is very significant - if the lovers themselves change, or if the world around them does, true love remains constant. The doubled "alter" and "alteration" pairing reminds us of what a less worthy sentiment, which we might think of as "not-love," is like – it’s changeable, fickle, and all too easily altered. The second lines makes the first point even more prominent through claiming that even when someone tries to "remove" affection, real love doesn’t give in and disappear. Faced with difficulties or adversity, love will always survive. |
| 'O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken' | After previously explaining what love isn't, the poet now goes on to explain what love is. He dramatically changes the tone with "O no!" to signal this shift from negative to positive, and immediately launches into an affirmation of love’s qualities. It is, as he says, an "ever-fixed mark thus never changes. The next line emphasises this steady, solid quality, saying that it weathers storms "tempests" but is never disturbed. |
| 'It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken' | Here, we discover that the "ever-fixed mark" that came up in line 5 is a star, in particular, the North Star, the only one that never changes position in the night sky. This refers to old-fashioned navigational knowledge where sailors would chart their location in the ocean based on the position of the stars. The second line as in the Elizabethan period, nobody knew what stars were made of did know the location of stars in the sky, or their "height." |
| 'Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come' | The poet introduces a familiar figure, that of the Grim Reaper. He’s called "Time" here, but we can read that not only as hours and minutes, but as age and death as well. Line 9 tells us that Love isn’t Time’s "fool" – that is to say, Love isn’t a court jester that panders to the will of Time, despite the fact that the "rosy lips and cheeks" of a loved one may fade as they age. The "bending sickle" that swings in line 10 is the scythe that is traditionally pictured in images of the Grim Reaper. |
| 'Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom' | These last two lines of the stanza sum up the point of the whole poem: love doesn’t change over time. It endures the passing of time, which is depicted as fleeting and "brief," and lasts until "the edge of doom," otherwise known as Judgment Day, the end of time. |
| 'If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved' | The final two lines of the sonnet provide a dramatic and quite bold closing statement. Line 13 uses rather legalistic language to basically say, "If these ideas are wrong and anyone can prove that I’m incorrect…" The line poses something of a challenge to readers. The final line resolves this challenge through a somewhat complicated twist; by saying that the poet has never written anything and that nobody has ever really been in love before if love actually turns out to be less than eternal, the poem’s truth immediately becomes impossible to dispute. |
| Symbolism of marriage | The idea of marriage is present in the background of this poem from the very first line. However, the poet doesn’t necessarily define marriage the way people typically do, as a religious sacrament or a legal procedure; instead, he emphasizes a more idealistic, transcendent vision of it. The marriage described in this poem is not a formal contract; rather, it is a "marriage of true minds," a phrase that suggests a deep understanding between two equals, rather than a mere legal bond. In Shakespeare’s time, marriage was far from an association between two equally powerful and independent people; women were basically surrendered into the control of their husbands when they got married. The relationship that Sonnet 116 discusses certainly does not conform to this conventional view of marriage. Instead of talking about the importance of obedience or subservience in married life, it focuses on faithfulness, forgiveness, and equality in any loving relationship. |
| Symbolism of love | The idea of love as a guiding star isn’t a new one, but in this poem, Shakespeare approaches it with a renewed enthusiasm. The poem’s central extended metaphor is the comparison of love to a star – specifically the North Star, which doesn’t ever change position in the night sky. This made it particularly important to sailors, who calculated the location of their ships based on the stars. The North Star provided a stable point around which the other stars appeared to revolve, making it central to navigation for centuries. The poet uses nautical imagery to construct the mental picture of love as a star leading all of us through life. |
| Symbolism of death | The macabre image of the Grim Reaper was quite familiar to Shakespeare’s Elizabethan readers. This skeletal, scythe-bearing figure of Death became an icon of European culture in the medieval period, in which death was a horrifyingly present part of everyday life (we can blame the devastating impact of the Black Plague for that). This image of death has stuck with Western civilization ever since, and is commonly invoked in poetry and art to remind us all of our own mortality. However, in this poem, the Reaper (referred to simply as "Time") actually loses – it turns out that Love is the one thing that can resist the power of death. |
| Iambic Pentameter | This sonnet, like all of the other sonnets, and like Shakespeare’s plays, is written in iambic pentameter. |
| The Speaker | The speaker is someone who has been through the wringer with love, and emerged with a clearer understanding of it. He’s absolutely certain that the vision of love he depicts here is the right one, and he’s willing to stake his reputation as a poet on it. We get the feeling that the Speaker has experienced what he thinks of as "the marriage of true minds," also known as true love, that his love remains strong, and that he believes that it’s eternal. |
| Setting | The poet creates a vivid scene in the minds of his readers by conjuring up the mental picture of a storm-tossed sea, a lost ship, and, above it all, the calm, unchanging, and dependable polestar. This dramatic scene provides a kind of visual metaphor for the poem’s interpretation of love as a guiding light above a troubled world. |
| Theme of loyalty | Loyalty plays a key role in true love – actually, the only significant role. The poem asserts that the true marker of love is its persistence; without constant devotion, "love is not love." A lot of difficulties can arise when two people who love each other, but if their feelings are real, none of these things should matter. In the ideal world of the poem, true lovers always forgive each other and stay together, regardless of the circumstances. |
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