Transcript William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 116
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
What is the poet saying?
• Quatrain 1
• 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.
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Quatrain 1
• Metaphor
• Comparing love to the “marriage of true
minds”
• This marriage will not and cannot
admit to impediments or flaws.
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Quatrain 1
• Definition of love
• Defined in the negative
• “Love is not love”
• Love doesn’t alter or bend when
things oppose it.
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Quatrain 2
• Oh no! It is an ever-fixéd 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.
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Quatrain 2
• Metaphor
• Comparing love to the “ever-fixed mark”
• A prominent object on shore that serves as
a guide to sailors
• Comparing love to “the star to every
wandering bark”
• The North Star
• Never changing
• Constant
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Quatrain 3
• 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.
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Quatrain 3
• Consistency and unbending nature of love
• Love is a constant
• It is influenced by nothing, even death
• “Time’s fool”
• Personification
• Death
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Couplet
• If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
• Turn occurs after line 13.
• If the poet is wrong about his definition
of love, then he has never written and
no one has ever loved.
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
How does he go about saying it?
• Poetic Devices
– Shakespearean Sonnet
• Rhyme Scheme
• abab cdcd efef gg
• 3 quatrains and 1 couplet
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Meter
•
ᴗ ´
ᴗ´ ᴗ ´ ᴗ ´ ᴗ
´
• Oh no! It is an ever fixéd mark
• Iambic Pentameter
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Metaphor
• Comparing love to things that remain
constant
• Seamark
• North Star
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Imagery
• Nautical Imagery
• “ever-fixed mark”
• “tempests”
• “wandering bark”
• “star”
• “his height be taken”
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116
Personification
• “Love’s not Time’s fool…/within his
bending sickle’s compass come” (9-10)
• Time is personified as the grim reaper
Geschke/British Literature
Shakespeare Sonnet 116