Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare Flashcards
1
Q
Meaning
A
- Attempts to explain & define true love
- Requirements of ‘perfect’ love become increasingly difficult to express/achieve during course of poem
- Leaves reader wondering if true love is something we can ever attain in real world
OR
- Explore platonic love OR sexual love
2
Q
Context
A
- Wrote 126 sonnets to young male friend: Henry Wriothesley
- One of Shakespeare’s patrons (wealthy supporter)
3
Q
Imagery #1
A
“It is the star to every wandering bark,”
- “star”
- Polestar
- Love stays in same place ∴ everyone focuses on it
- Helps salior to navigate ∴ love is guide in life = helps when off course
- “worth’s unknown” = invaluable
- Cannot fully know love or appreciate wholly
- Polestar
- “wandering bark” = ship
- Isolated & alone without love
- Lots of naval imagery
- Associated with homosexuality = sexual love
4
Q
Imagery #2
A
“Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks”
- Personification of love as eternal, everlasting force
- Resists death = immortality of love
- True love will not diminish even when Beloved is no longer beautiful and young
- Personfication
- Time = Death in form of the Grim Reaper
- Love is not defeated or changed by death
- Time = Death in form of the Grim Reaper
- Enjambent
- Love is everlasting even after death
- Hard & soft consonants
- Ups and downs of love
5
Q
Tone #1
A
Emphatic, romantic tone
“O no, it is an ever-fixed mark”
- “O”
- Shakespeare really pushing himself to make sense of concept of love
- Metaphor - “mark”
- True love does not change even if the circumstances around it do
- OR means love as stain, cannot be washed out
- Brands you forever
6
Q
Tone #2
A
Assertive, legalese tone: volta comes in rhyming couplet
“proved” and “loved”
- Half rhyme: defines beauty of love with deformed and misshapen couplet
- People coming together in perfect union = deconstructed in this rhyme
- ∴ If couplet explaining love cannot reach harmony and perfection = humans can’t reach Shakespeare’s standards of love
- OR stating that true love is not perfect
- i.e. Partners in relationship not always in agreement + harmonise
- OR allude to idea at the time man + woman were only couple possible, harmonise
- By half rhyme = True love doesn’t necessarily always occur between just men and women
- People coming together in perfect union = deconstructed in this rhyme
7
Q
Structure
A
Sonnet
- Traditionally: About love (from man to woman)
- Uses sonnet in playful way to show platonic or romantic/sexual love
- Towards a man = Henry Wriothesley
- Uses sonnet in playful way to show platonic or romantic/sexual love
- Iambic pentameter
- Uses strict restrictions = create idealistic true love?
8
Q
Comparison 3x
A
- ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’
- ‘My Last Duchess’
- ‘Remember’
9
Q
‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ Comparison
A
Describes unhealthy love in which is emasculated by Beloved
10
Q
‘My Last Duchess’ Comparison
A
- Contrasting view of love
- Poem describers a love that changes with sinister consequences
11
Q
‘Remember’ Comparison
A
Also sonnet about love which challenges traditional subject matter & poetic voice of the form