IF THOU MUST LOVE ME, LET IT BE FOR A NOUGHT

First of all I have to consider the title to make predictions about the possible content of the text; reading this I can expect the poem to be about the theme of love, a typical theme of the courtly love poetry. Such expectation is created by the word “love” and an intelligent reader can notice that the poem may be a dialogue between two lovers and this is confirmed by the pronoun “me” and by the word “thou” that stands for you. The title poses a condition; it creates curiosity about the condition posed to love somebody. It is not a coincidence that the title is repeated on the first line of the sonnet. Thus it reinforces the same curiosity. Indeed all the sonnet is a lyrical investigation about the conditions of love on the part of the speaking voice.

Considering the layout the reader can note that the poem is arranged into fourteen lines, so it is a sonnet. In this chase the sonnet is written according to the Elizabethan model, because it is organized into three quatrains and a tercet.

In the first two quatrains the speaking voice tell to his partner that if he wants to love her, he has to love her only for love’s shake. He has not to say that he loves her for her smile, look, way or speaking gently, or because he is agree with her thoughts because these things may change with the time and their love can be destroyed.

In the last quatrain the speaking voice underlines that his lover does not love her for the pity that wipe her cheeks and she adds that a creature, who receives his comfort, forgets to weep and therefore lost his love, while in the couplet the speaking voice underlined the initial concept that is he has to love her for the love’s shake.

So the first three quatrains have the function to introduce a situation, while the last stanza has the function to report a conclusion, a possible solution, so there is a cause and effect relation between them.

In the text the speaking voice invites her lover to love her just for love. This hypothesis is confirmed in the second line by words like “except” or “only”and these underline the concept of “love’s sake”. It seems as if the speaking voice wanted to express the way a woman approaches a man using the semantic field containing the verbs “to smile, to look, to speak”.

Within the text an intelligent reader can notice that the speaking voice underlines the mutual aspect of love thanks to many devices; for example there is a semantic field, that is that of mutual love containing the words “love, smile, look, speaking gently, thought, change”.

Analysing the phonological level the reader can notice that the rhyme scheme is ABBA ABBA CDCD CD, rhymes create musical harmony and they make the poem easier to remember. Moreover the repetition of the sound –w, well, with, wrought, wiping together with the repetition of the sound –h, who, thy, might adds meaning to the text. In addition there is the repetition of the word love and change and so it goes without saying that the theme of the poem is that of mutual love. Besides there is the repetition of different possessive adjective and pronoun like “me, her, I”, and so the reader can imagine that the poet is a dialogue between the speaking voice and her love; he is trying to speak with him. This is also confirmed by the use of the reported speech from the third to the sixth lines; here the speaking voice underlines that love is not such when you love somebody for her love, her look, her way of speaking gently. Love implies something different going beyond attitude. Love does not bring in simply “a sense of pleasant ease.”

Considering the syntactically level the reader can notice that there is a white space between the stanzas that together with the use of colons and commas invite the reader to stop and reflect about the text. However there are also run-on-lines like “way of speaking”, so the reader has to run to the next line to make sense of what he reads.