Let me not to the marriage

Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare

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-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his heighth 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.

The sonnet "let me not to the marriage" focuses on the theme of love, which is expressed through the word "marriage" in the title.

Love is described from different points of view: it is not frightened by obstacles and it does not bend in front of difficulties (first quatrain); moreover it does not decrease because of distance, but like a star, it stays as a point of reference for lovers (second quatrain); besides it is not changed by the time passing or even by the arrive of death, in fact it increases more and more instead of vanishing (third quatrain).

In the end the poet says that people should care more about love and live it in a firmer way.

Exercises

      •1.What is the function of the three quatrains?

         The sonnet is organized in three quatrains and a rhyming couplet following the Elizabethan   structure, to describe in a better way Love.

      •2.What is the message send by the poet in the last two lines?

          The poet, with the last two lines (rhyming couplet) tells to the readers that, if the sonnet he had written is wrong, then I would have never written the sonnet and nobody has never loved. In this way he would tell people to take more attention about love and live it in an untroubled way.

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

          In the first quatrain the poet describes Love saying that it is not scared by obstacles and it is not crumbled by difficulties that it may find on his way (love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove).

      •4.How is Love defined in the second quatrain?

         In the second quatrain Shakespeare says that Love does not decrease because of distance; moreover he uses a metaphor to say that Love is like a star, a point of reference (or a guide) during the life, also when it is far away.

      •5. Why are there so many compounds of "know" in quatrain number two?                                          

      •6. Why is the rhetorical level the most important in quatrain three? And what is his function?

           I think that the rhetorical level in quatrain three is the most important because Shakespeare wants to say that Love is so strong that it does not decrease with the time passing but it gets more and more stronger.

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

           In the rhyming couplet, the function of ever and never is very important: in fact, the poet uses ever to say that Love will last in the life of people, resisting to difficulties. On the other hand he uses never to say that Love will not finish.