Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare

Question 1

Meaning

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

Context

Answer 2

• Wrote 126 sonnets to young male friend: Henry Wriothesley
  
  • One of Shakespeare’s patrons (wealthy supporter)

Question 3

Imagery #1

Answer 3

“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
• “wandering bark” = ship
  
  • Isolated & alone without love
  • Lots of naval imagery
    
    • Associated with homosexuality = sexual love

Question 4

Imagery #2

Answer 4

“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
• Enjambent
  
  • Love is everlasting even after death
• Hard & soft consonants
  
  • Ups and downs of love

Question 5

Tone #1

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Tone #2

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Structure

Answer 7

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
• Iambic pentameter
  
  • Uses strict restrictions = create idealistic true love?

Question 8

Comparison 3x

Answer 8

• ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’
• ‘My Last Duchess’
• ‘Remember’

Question 9

‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ Comparison

Answer 9

Describes unhealthy love in which is emasculated by Beloved

Question 10

‘My Last Duchess’ Comparison

Answer 10

• Contrasting view of love
  
  • Poem describers a love that changes with sinister consequences

Question 11

‘Remember’ Comparison

Answer 11

Also sonnet about love which challenges traditional subject matter & poetic voice of the form