The Term of Sonnet

The sonnet is one of the poetic forms that can be found in lyric poetry from Europe. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song". By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. The conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history. The writers of sonnets are sometimes referred to as "sonneteers," although the term can be used derisively. One of the best-known sonnet writers is Shakespeare, who wrote 154 of them. A Shakespearean sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line contains ten syllables, and each line is written in iambic pentameter in which a pattern of a non-emphasized syllable followed by an emphasized syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, in which the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

Sonnet

True Love

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.



William Shakespeare

Theme of Sonnet

1. Let me not = Whatever else I agree to, I will not concede that etc.; I will not be forced to admit that.

The negative wish, if that is how it might be best described, almost reads like the poet's injunction against himself to prevent him from admitting something which he was on the point of conceding. Perhaps he was being told frequently by others, and the beloved himself, that love could not last for ever, that there were impediments, that there was change and alteration, loss and physical decay, all of which militate against true love. And finally, as an act of defiance, he insists that it is not as others see it, that love can surmount all these obstacles, that although nothing can last forever, yet true love can last and hold out until the final reckoning.

the marriage of true minds - this suggests a union that is non-physical, Platonic and idealistic. See the introduction above.

true = constant, faithful, unchanging, truthful. Compare Polonius in Hamlet:

--to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

2. Admit = accept, agree that there are; allow to enter or to intrude. By all commentators this is taken to be a clear reference to the marriage ceremony, when the officiating clergyman proclaims: 'I require and charge you, as you will answer at the dreadful day of judgement, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you do know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, that ye confess it.' However the only word which links this extract from the Marriage Service in The Book of Common Prayer to the sonnet is impediment, which has become the plural impediments here. But the use of marriage in line 1 and impediments immediately following makes the connection almost inevitable. In Much Ado the word is used three times in connection with preventing a marriage:

3. Which changes (ceases, becomes unfaithful, becomes less) when it finds a change in the beloved, or a change in circumstances.

4. bends = yields, changes direction, is untrue and inconstant towards a loved one.
the remover = one who moves, one who shifts his ground, one who changes himself.
to remove = to make oneself different in accordance with the changes in the other person. In this context, the word remove has a rather indefinite meaning, suggestive of moving something or someone out of the way, possibly even suggestive of subterfuge. Compare however:
Then happy I, that love and am beloved
Where I may not remove nor be removed. 25
Not being moved or removed implies eternal constancy and fidelity.

5. an ever-fixed mark = a sea mark, a prominent navigational feature, a beacon, for guidance of shipping. In the days before lighthouses, mariners used well known and prominent features on the land as a guide to fix their position at sea. The spires of coastal churches, towers, outcrops of rock of a particular shape or colour were obvious sea marks. Beacons were no doubt also lit at the entrances to major ports, but there was no widespread network of lighthouses as in modern times. Mostly sailors were highly dependent on local knowledge. The point of the metaphor here is that the ever-fixed mark is permanent and unshakeable, always there as a guide to the storm tossed mariner.

6. That looks on tempests - because of their height, the sea-marks would appear to be looking down on the world below, and almost riding above the tempests. Because of their solidity storms had no effect on them.

. It - i.e. love, as in line 5. Love is both the ever fixed mark and the Pole star to guide the lover through the stormy waters of life.
the star - the most obvious reference is to the Pole or North star. In the Northern hemisphere it always appears to be unmoving in the Northern sky, while all the other stars circle around it. Julius Caesar boasts of being immovable, like the northern star:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality

8. Whose worth's unknown = the true nature and value of which is unknown. It was not known at the time what the stars were made of, or how they shone, although vatious theories existed. Modern astronomy cannot be said to begin before the eighteenth century, even though Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo had more or less overturned, by Elizabethan times, the Ptolemaic system of an earth centred universe.

although his height be taken = although its angle of elevation above the horizon could be measured. The height of the Pole star above the horizon at its zenith was a guide to the ship's latitude. The measurement would probably have been done with a quadrant. The sextant was introduced slightly later. (See OED quadrant 5, sextant 3.) The illustration of a quadrant opposite is of one which would be used on land. For sea travelling no doubt much more compact versions were available.

9. Time's fool - In Shakespeare's day readers would probably understand this in terms of the fool employed in large establishments by the nobility, a favoured character whose wit enlivened many a dull day. But their position was probably precarious, and they were liable to physical punishment, or dismissal. See King Lear:

10. bending sickle - the sickle had a curved blade, and several meanings of 'bending' are appropriate, as 1.) curved; 2.) causing the grass that it cuts to bend and bow; 3.) cutting a curved swathe in the grass.

11. All life is fleeting, and human life is measured by the brief hours and weeks of experience. In comparison with the eternity of love, any unit of time is short.

12. bears it out = endures, continues faithful.
the edge of doom = the last day, the day of judgement, the day of death. doom in Shakespeare can mean a person's death, as it still does in the phrase, to meet one's doom. Or it can be applied to the day of the Last Judgement, or the judgement itself. Macbeth exclaims in horror against the long sequence of Banquo's descendants who are to reign in his place hereafter:

13. If this be error = if my claim that love lasts for ever is erroneous. error also suggests wandering (from the truth), as above in line 7. every wandering bark. From the Latin verb errare - to wander.

upon me proved - a legalistic term, meaning, approximately, 'proved against me'. The combination of this term with that of error possibly implies religious heresy and action taken against it, as for example in the frequent practice used by the Inquisition to compel victims under torture to confess to the error of their ways. See JK p.334. Compare also the following from Volpone by Ben Jonson, circa 1605:

14. I never writ = I have never written anything.
nor no man ever loved = and no man has ever loved (even though he believed himself to be in love).

The fact that there is no logical connection between love's eternal status and whether or not the poet has written anything, or men think themselves to be in love, is largely irrelevant, because the poem has by now made its seemingly irrefutable claim. The weakness of the concluding couplet does contribute to a slight sense of disappointment, because the preceding lines are so vibrant with life and love. Perhaps this is intentional, in order to underscore the transitory nature of all that we experience, and to show that, despite our grandiose claims to immortality, we all must depart beneath the eternal vault, and love itself paradoxically, though eternal, is part of mortality:

Background of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564. Very little is known about his life, but by 1592 he was in London working as an actor and a dramatist. Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more. Many of these plays were very successful both at court and in the public playhouses. In 1613, Shakespeare retired from the theatre and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon. He died and was buried there in 1616

His Work

Shakespeare wrote plays and poems. His plays were comedies, histories and tragedies. His 17 comedies include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Among his 10 history plays are Henry V and Richard III. The most famous among his 10 tragedies are Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. Shakespeare’s best-known poems are The Sonnets, first published in 1609.

His famous of Sonnet True Love.