Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 revolves around the theme of attempting to define romantic love and how it never changes, never fades, outlasts death and admits no flaws by suggesting what it is and is not. To convey this theme of love, Shakespeare generates tones of desperation and curiosity reinforced with metaphors, rhyming couplets and imagery.

The opening lines of the first quatrain of sonnet establishes the fact that it and the rest of the sonnet is written in Iambic Pentameter, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds”. The use of Iambic Pentameter draws attention to the sonnet as being important, which was typical of Elizabethan-age sonnets. The speaker in the first quatrain, states that “the marriage of true minds” (love) is perfect and unchanging and does not “admit impediments”. The oxymoron “love is not love” and “or bends with the remover to remove” portrays Shakespeare’s idea of love being unchangeable. These themes in the first quatrain are accentuated through the use of a rhyming couplet with “minds and finds”, which also serve to give the sonnet more flow.

Shakespeare utilises metaphors in the second quatrain to establish the new idea of what love really is. “Oh no!” heightens the speakers new train of thought on love and how it “looks on tempests and is never shaken”, a metaphor on love remaining intact even in the most dire of circumstances as it “is an ever-fixed mark”. Shakespeare employs the clever use of love as an allusion to star guiding ships to “wandering bark”, comparing love to the North Star that all branches of the trees bend towards. It seems that Shakespeare is conveying love is a completely immovable and utterly powerful. Rhyming couplets are seen in full effect here as they serve to announce Shakespeare’s and in turn, the speakers, firm views on love.   

The third quatrain serves to portray that love is not susceptible to deterioration through time. The capitalisation of Time in “Love’s not Time’s fool” accentuates love’s most powerful adversary. Although beauty of “rosy lips and cheeks” dwindles as time passes, Shakespeare states that “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks”, meaning love stands the test of time until “the edge of doom”. Personification is applied by Shakespeare in “within his bending sickle’s compass come’ with ‘his’ being a metaphor of beauty approaching the personified death.   

In typical Shakespearean fashion, the sonnet concludes its three quatrains with a couplet that serves as the resolution for Shakespeare’s deduction of love. Shakespeare writes that if he is proven wrong in his meaning of love “and upon me proved”, he must never have written a word and for that, no man can ever be in love. This couplet defines and concludes Shakespeare’s firm and passionate belief in the meaning of love.  

Through the complex intertwining of literary techniques in sonnet 116, Shakespeare successfully manages to convey his ideas of the meaning of love.