The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

(coco) #1

The poem begins with an appeal to the past, wherein
the speaker claims that all previous monumental poems
he has written to the young man, which said that “I
could not love you dearer” (l. 2), “do lie” (l. 1). The love
the speaker feels for the young man increases as time
goes on, yet there is no reason for the speaker to believe
that his love “should afterwards burn clearer” (l. 4).
The poem moves into a self-referential register in the
second QUATRAIN. Grammatically, the second quatrain
is simply a description of the activities or “accidents” of
PERSONIFIED Time. King’s decrees change, beauty fades,
and vows are broken, all by time. The self-referential
move comes at the end of the quatrain, anticipating the
traditional VOLTA between lines 8 and 9. Line 8, “[Time’s
accidents] Divert strong minds to th’ course of altering
things,” thematically refl ects the purpose of a volta, as
the accidents of time change the course of the poem.
However, the actual volta does not come between lines
8 and 9; rather, it occurs immediately before the fi nal
COUPLET, in line 12. By referencing the “proper” place
for the volta within the fi ction of the poem, Shakespeare
shows his awareness of the ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SON-
NET convention that he is breaking, but he is also draw-
ing the audience out of the sonnet’s fi ction. By making
the audience aware of the poem as a poem, he high-
lights the artifi cial and monumental nature of the son-
net, which itself refers back to the idea of immortality
through artistic creation.
The fi rst quatrain deals with the past, showing that
any statements of monumental love from the past are
false, and the second quatrain shows that the future
cannot be decided because all things, even the most
certain, eventually fall prey to time. The third quatrain
focuses wholly on the present and is wholly in the form
of a question about the legitimacy of saying “Now I
love you best” (l. 9). The present moment is not the
fi nal or ultimate expression of the speaker’s love for the
LOVELY BOY, for the hanging doubt of the fi rst two qua-
trains is embodied in the fact that the present is ques-
tioned. The answer to the question comes in the
couplet.
“Love is a babe” (l. 13) is a phrase that works on at
least three levels: It points to the CONCEIT that the love
between the speaker and the young man is still in its
infancy, it appeals to the traditional image of Cupid as


Love, and it implicitly references the procreative urge
found in the rest of the sequence. The speaker’s love,
like a child, “Still doth grow” (l. 14), and with the love
the speaker’s ability to create a monument in verse will
grow as well.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Andrew Bretz

Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 116 (“Let me
not to the marriage of true minds”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) In this SONNET, the speaker
tries to describe a love that is so strong that it can act as
a model for true married love. Interestingly, the
description begins with an acknowledgment that real
love exists in “the marriage of true minds” (l. 1), and in
order for the speaker to acknowledge this kind of love,
he refuses to allow “impediments” (l. 2). This last word
is one used in the marriage ceremony at the point
where the minister asks if anyone knows of any reason
to prevent the marriage from happening—for example,
one of the parties may already be married. Both the
cleric and the speaker are concerned with truth, then,
in the legal sense of allowing the marriage to occur as
well as in the truth of the love between the two part-
ners in the union. The phrase “let me not” (l. 1) indi-
cates that the speaker is taking a vow or promising
truthfully. But here the speaker is more concerned
with the marriage of the couple’s “minds” than with
their bodies. This kind of love is truly an unusual sort.
The love the speaker writes of is immutable (unchange-
able), no matter what it encounters. It does not alter
“when it alteration fi nds” (l. 3), nor does it accept the
infl uence of time—“the remover” (l. 4)—to change the
love in any way for the worse.
The love described in this poem is defi nitely not
changeable; it is “an ever fi xed mark” (l. 5), an immu-
table, fi xed point in the changeable ocean, like a light-
house or a beacon, which is never “shaken” (l. 6) but
guides sailors to safety, even during huge storms, or
“tempests” (l. 6). This love is also like a particular
star—perhaps Polaris, the pole star or North Star—by
which ships (“barques,” 1. 7) that have wandered from
their course can adjust it. The actual composition
(“worth,” l. 8) of the star may not be known, but its

388 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 116

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