In the first stanza (with the rythmatic pattern of abab) of Sonnet 116, Shakespeare repeats the words ‘love’, ‘altar’, and ‘remove.’ This technique of repetition places emphasis on the idea that if a person is really in love, changes wouldn’t have to me made. Also, in the final couplet alliteration is used. ‘Never’, ‘nor’, and ‘no’ are the three negative words Shakespeare uses to strengthen his opinion of love. He is so confidence in his opinion and suggests that if his opinion is wrong, he has never written and no one has ever loved. This puts the reader in a difficult position but to accept his idea of love because the reader knows he has written and knows others have loved.
In the second stanza (with the rythmatic pattern of cdcd), a metaphor of stars and ships is presented. Shakespeare suggests that the permanent North star guides chips when the seas are rough and chips are tossed about because the star remains unshaken, ‘that looks on tempests and is never shaken’, and is capable of guiding ships. In this metaphor, love is compared to the North star and the idea Shakespeare conveys through the technique of metaphors is that love can be used as a guide to get through difficult stages of life.
Personification is presented in the second and third stanzas. In the second stanza, love is personified with the human characteristics of ‘whose’ and ‘his’. Shakespeare speaks of love as a human to express its importance and to convey his idea of love. In addition, the third stanza capitalises ‘Time’ as a person. It is personified to express that love doesn’t operate on a clock. Shakespeare suggests that physical traits, ‘rosy lips and cheeks’, fades with time, but love does not. Personification is used for a second time in the third stanza in a sense of Death. Shakespeare personifies Death when he refers to ‘his bending sickle’, which is the weapon of the infamous Grimm Reaper. Shakespeare suggests that death can take away beauty, and even life, but not true love; love lives on forever.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds conveys the strong idea that love conquers all through the use of various poetic techniques, such as metaphors, personification, alliteration, and repetition. These techniques assist the reader into accepting Shakespeare’s ideas.
