Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.

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IB English Commentary:                                                        Dianna Gu

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

Shakespeare's love sonnets describe three different contexts in which love operates and, as such, he depicts a multi-faceted picture of love. Love in Shakespeare's poems does not have a single definition, but rather, an intangible conglomeration of characteristics that, together, make up an ever-powerful force that “weathers” all obstacles. In Shakespeare's Sonnet number 116 love is depicted as an overwhelming force that triumphs over time, the physical world, and reason.

Sonnet 116 consists of 14 lines, each with 10 stressed and unstressed syllables known as iambic pentameter, with a set rhyme scheme of: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. This rhyme sequence is set in the usual structure of the sonnet of three quatrains and concludes with a rhyming couplet. This style creates a flowing lyrical effect that highlights and emphasises important themes in the sonnet. The run on lines in this sonnet also create this effect, as well as having control over our reading.

It is usual for there to be a pause for thought in the sonnet’s message at the end of each quatrain, especially the second, in order to add tension, with the sonnet resolving its objective in the final couplet, just as a song normally resolves its root chord at its close. To convey the sense of resolution and completeness at the end of the sonnet there are often key words, or tie-words, present in the closing couplet that are also present in the earlier quatrains. This structuring provides a framework on which to build the words, phrases, themes, rhymes, syncopation, punctuation and rhythm of the sonnet making it, at its best, a self-contained work of art.

In former times sonnet 116 was almost universally read as a paean to ideal and eternal love, with which readers could easily identify, adding their own dream of perfection to what they found within it. Modern criticism makes it possible to look beneath the idealism and to see some hints of a world which is perhaps slightly more disturbed than the poet pretends. In the first place it is important to see that the sonnet belongs in this place, sandwiched between three which discuss the philosophical question of how love deceives both eye and mind and judgement, and is then followed by four others which attempt to excuse the poet's own unfaithfulness and betrayal of the beloved. Set in such a context it does of course make Sonnet 116 appear even more like a battered sea-mark which nevertheless rises above the waves of destruction, for it confronts all the vicissitudes that have afflicted the course of the love described in these sonnets, and declares that, in the final analysis, they are of no account.

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Sonnet 116 has a passionate, didactic narrator.  He orders and exhorts the reader.  He commences in a somewhat majestic tone and does not address the object of his affections, but directly addresses his audience. “Let no man to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.” Here, Shakespeare is stating that there should be no obstacles between two people in “true” love. By using the word “impediments,” the speaker is talking either of his or his love's ebbing feelings towards each other. He claims here that love is so completely divine, that when it is pure and ...

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