Edexcel IGCSE Poetry Anthology Texts - Sonnet 116

Form + Structure

- Traditional (Elizabethan) Sonnet form - most commonly used for love poetry

-Thus, has rhyming scheme typical of a sonnet (abab cdcd efef gg)

- Three quatrains + rhyming couplets - may represent the consistency of true love

- Written in the 1st person, in a direct and personal tone

- Unclear audience

- LINES 1-4 = Constancy of love

- LINES 5-8 = Guidance

- LINES 9-12 = Longevity of love

- LINES 13-14 = Volta

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; " [quatrain one]

- The couples who know what 'true' love really is, according to Shakespeare, have no reason as to why they shouldn't be together

- Allusion - Makes reference to traditional wedding vows

- Caesura - solidifies point prior

" love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove" [quatrain one]

- Use of polyptoton - love is not something that changes, but rather is set in stone, constant

"O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;" [quatrain two]

- Metaphor - love is compared to a lighthouse, which guides sailors to safety - love gives guidance

- Love is also durable and can survive during difficult, and even dangerous (as implied by 'tempests') times

"It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken." [quatrain two]

- Another metaphor to show the guidance of love - compared to the star Polaris, which sailors use to navigate to safety in the Northern hemisphere

- Love is a source of safety - without the star, the sailors would be lost, much like without true love, those in the relationship would be lost and have no sense of stability, meaning or guidance

- The value of love cannot be measured - though society tries to through the looks of people - superficiality will never result in true love

"Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;" [quatrain three]

- Capitalisation of Love and Time - two overpowering, separate forces not in cooperation with each other

- True love, as mentioned before, remains consistent - it will not falter with time or blossom even more as the years go by

- Physical beauty, on the other hand, will succumb to time - again suggesting superficiality will never result in true love

"Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom." [quatrain three]

- Once again, promoting the longevity and durability of love

- Shakespeare in fact provides a contrast with the briefness of life and longevity of love - mundane life to the very end of it (doom = death/hell/day of judgement??)

"If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved." [volta xoxos]

- Assertive tone, using language of certainty - Shakespeare is 100% convinced he is right - contrasts with the very abstract, figurative language he uses to describe the beauty of true love

- He is so sure, that he uses fact (him being a writer + inevitability of mankind falling in love), and basically says 'if you think my advice is wrong, you are going against cold hard proof' - sense of sarcasm/irony?