LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE

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 wand'ring 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.

1.     What is the function of the three quatrains?

The function of the three quatrains is to give a definition of what true love is to Shakespeare: he makes a list of what it entails and he emphasizes the undying last of it.

2.     What is the message given by the poet in the last lines?

Shakespeare wants the reader to dare to say him that his beliefs about true love are wrong. He emphasizes it saying that if he is in error, he has never loved somebody and he has never wrote something (impossible).

3.     How does Shakespeare define love in the first quatrain? Quote from the text

Shakespeare defines true love in the first quatrain as something that never changes even though it finds problems or the people feeling this love are distant:

Love is not love// which alters when it alteration finds,//or bends with the remover to remove (lines 2-3-4).

4.     How is love defined in the second quatrain?

Love in the second quatrain is compared with a lighthouse that during a tempest is never shaken and it is the reference point for every boat even if it is far away:

It is an ever-fixed mark// that looks on tempests and is never shaken;//it is the star to every wand' ring bark,// whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken (lines 5-6-7-8).

The metaphor means that true love is the point of reference for everyone, in period of problems as well and even if its worth is unknown.

5.      Why are there so many compounds of "no" in quatrain number two? What is their function?

Because he wants to underline that his beliefs are true, so through the use of many compounds of "no" he emphasizes the impossibility of the opposite idea: true love lasts forever and never and it is the guide of lovers.

6.     Why is the rhetorical level the most important in quatrain three and what is its function?

Because through the rhetorical level Shakespeare wants to catch the reader's attention. The reader finds, in fact, an alteration of the common words' order (line 10).  Shakespeare wants to underline in the third quatrain that true love doesn't care of beauty because it goes beyond it.

7.     What is the function of "ever" and "never" in the couplet?

Their function is to emphasize the impossibility of this statement and therefore the truth of his beliefs about true love set out in the previous lines.