Shakespearean Sonnet – Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
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Shakespearean Sonnet – Let me not to the marriage of true minds
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds” struck me like someone standing on a soapbox screaming out his beliefs. Shakespeare is making a declaration of his thoughts on love, and I happen to agree with him. Love cannot be shaken by adversity nor changed by time. True love is constant: “it is an ever-fixed mark”.
Though this poem is short in length it is full of emotion. Shakespeare makes it known in the first line that he will not come between two people who are in love. He believes that love is strong enough to endure temptation and not waver. If love is altered by another, a “remover” of love, it was not love.
The structure of this poem is relatively simple compared to other sonnets by Shakespeare with each quatrain describing what love is (or what it is not) and the final qaudratin reaffirming what the poet has said by placing his own merit on the line.
The opening lines of the sonnet dives the reader in a quick pace into the poem, accomplished by the use of enjambment meaning flows as the lines progress, and the readers eye is forced to go on to the next sentence. The first quatrain asserts that true love is immortal and unchanging: it neither changes on its own nor allows itself to be changed, even when it encounters changes in the loved one. Quatrain two embarks on a series of seafaring metaphors to further establish the permanence of true love: in line 5 it is an “ever-fixed mark,” a sea mark that navigators could use to guide their course; in line 7 it is a steadfast star (the North Star, perhaps), whose height we are able to measure (as with a quadrant) although we may know nothing of its nature (the science of stars had hardly progressed by Shakespeares time). Both of these metaphors emphasize the constancy and dependability of true love.
Finally, quatrain three nails home the theme, with loves undying essence prevailing against the “bending sickle” of Time. Time is loves most powerful adversary, and this is demonstrated by the capitalization of the word making it a living breathing enemy of love. Times “hours and weeks” are “brief” compared to loves longevity, and only some great and final destruction of apocalyptic proportions could spell its doom. The reference to the sickle shows just how much of a threat Shakespeare views Time. Just like death (grim reaper), Time too carries his sickle waiting to steal love that is based on the loveliness of youth. But of course true love cannot be fooled by Time. Love cannot be measured in “brief hours and weeks”; love is eternal; it “bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
If what he has stated is proven to be wrong he “never writ, nor no man ever loved.” Since we know, ofcourse,