Sonnet 116

Sonnet 116

It's about how constant true love is
1. it cant be shaken
2. if their love is real love it stays more powerful than ever
3. doesn't change when circumstances change
Form
1. sonnet
2. 3 quatrains with rhyming couplet at end
3. regular rhyme scheme gives poem sense of order&completeness
Structure
1. quatrains all discuss the same idea of love being unchanging in slightly different ways and using different imagery
2. final couplet guarantee he's telling truth
3. 'remover to remove' 'alters when it alteration'
  1. near repetition-love is constant, it wont change the way appearances do
Language about sailing
1. true love shown to be reliable-guides us in a uncertain and stormy world
2. 'ever-fixed mark' 'star'
  1. metaphor compares love to Pole star which stays in the same place in sky & helps sailors to navigate
3. 'bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken'
  1. stars height can be mathmatically measured, but its value to the ship it guides is immeasurable
  2. can't measure actual value of love
Language about time and ageing
1. when we get older we look different, not as attractive- true love isn't tricked by effects of time
2. love isnt at mercy of time
3. 'time's fool'
  1. personification- makes the battle between time and love dramatic
4. 'banding sickles compass'
  1. it's within times power to take away youth and beauty
  2. love will triumph over death
5. 'brief hours and weeks....edge of doom'
  1. any measue of time is short for love because love love will keep going to the end of time
6. 'rose lips and cheeks'
  1. even if youths beauty fades love will still exist
'let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments; love is not love ....alteration finds'
1. true love does not change when faced with difficult or unexpected circumstances
2. believes that nothing can stop true love from lasting
3. 'impediments'
  1. word used in traditional marriage services- reminds us of weddings
4. 'marriae'
  1. coming together
'if this be error and upon me proved, i never writ, nor no man ever loved'
1. poet guarentees us that everything he is saying is true
2. if he is wrong then i never wrote anything and no one has ever been in love
Feelings & Attitudes
1. devotion
  1. voice in poem is declaring a love that will not change
2. constancy
  1. sees love as fixed and eternal- wont change even when object of love changes
3. True love
  1. it's not a shallow, superficial love which based on what the loved one looks like

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	Created by eilishhardy about 10 years ago