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Sonnet 116, context - Coggle Diagram
Sonnet 116
"love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration findes,/Or bends with the remover to remove."
At first the statement seems to be a paradox: "love is not love". The speaker wants to distinguish true love from weak and insincere forms of love.
he argues such "alteration" should not be a stimulus to a change in a relationship itself. True love is defined, in part, by resistance to change and its capacity to endure, even when challenged.
"The remover" in the poem is time itself. True love works against time it doesn't diminish even as something like beauty fades. True love is marked by its resistance to change even as the circumstances of the relationship change.
despite the challenges and turbulence that occasionally crops up in, the poem retains its fundamental rhythm, overcoming obstacles without altering its basic adherence to the formula of the Shakespearean sonnet.
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Lov's not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickles compasse come/ Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes/ But beares it out even to the edge of doome:"
Love is not fooled by time: it does not depend on physical beauty, so it doesn't diminish even as physical beauty fails. Love will "bear" all and remain everlasting, immortal
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The reader may wonder whether the speaker describes love here as real, or whether it is an unearthly ideal which suggests love may be unattainable beyond human expression.
The sense of uncanny perfection reflected continue to uphold the form of the Shakespearean sonnet, rhymed efef, in strong iambic pentameter with few substitutions. The rhyme meter of the poem suggests that the speaker exerts tight control over his language and that the language itself is somehow artificial and constrained.
"if this be error and upon me prov'd/ I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd"
The use of legalistic language is phrased to challenge the readers to prove that this definition of love is wrong. His ideas of love is indisputable
If he is speaking to someone else but himself the reader may feel less convincing because of its hyperbolic, grandiose and overreaching,
The poem's meter remains strongly in iambic pentameter- this suggests the speaker's confidence and self-assurance could be unnatural and more artificial from its transition
symbols
"Star" Renaissance sailors used stars to help them navigate, measuring their position against the height of the stars. However, a lighthouse is artificial something that can be touched. In contrast, stars are distant- inhuman and unreachable. Shakespeare plays on an ancient philosophical tradition of kinds of love arranged in the hierarchy where the highest kind of love exceeds human comprehension like the star. (The highest and truest form of love is beyond human comprehension)
"Ever- fixed Marke" refers to a seamark i.e. a beacon or lighthouse. These structures serve to warn sailors of danger through rocky outcroppings on which they might run aground. They, therefore, are positive forces that guide people through the dark and difficult patches of life, showing them dangers they might not otherwise see. By associating love with such marks, the poem argues that love itself is a solid, guiding force in people's lives.
Nautical imagery: "tempests", "nevershaken", "star to every wandring barke"
use of personifcation as love is never ending it is infinite and can overcome storms true love should stand tall during "tempests".
"wandring barke" reflects on the speakers view that every ship can look in the sky and find guidance to love.
context
Almost all Renaissance sonnet sequences are narrated by a male speaker who is passionately in love with an unattainable woman- so much so that he seems on the verge of madness, out of control. Poets also often used nautical metaphors to express this state of semi-madness, describing themselves as doomed ships, whose captains were negligent or drunk or forgetful. - Shakespeare's insight into this is subverted in some ways as the speaker reflects on the stability of love and its ability to exceed beyond change.
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