18 pages • 36 minutes read
William ShakespeareSonnet 116
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Spiritual Love
The concept of a spiritual love is introduced in the first line. The phrase “true minds” (Line 1) illustrates a vision of love as an ennobling, intellectual experience. The comparison to a star (Line 7), which is associated with the heavens and awe at the cosmos, portrays a view of love as elevating humans to a higher realm, above that of earthly concerns. This love is a virtuous, steady love, infinitely selfless and boundlessly forgiving. Rather than love as submersion in the emotional extremes of ecstasy and agony, love is a steady drip: it does not overwhelm the lover or the beloved with emotionality, but is rational, even classical, in its Platonic, ideal form. Though there are no overt religious references, the connection between true love as an enlightening, spiritual experience and religion is evident, though Shakespeare’s religious views are unknown.
There is a natural tendency to wonder about whether the sonnet hints at a sexual or romantic relationship between the poet and the young man. However, the ardor expressed, taking place within the context of deep friendship, was not an unusual poetic conceit during Elizabethan England. This sonnet in particular seeks to describe a love that is a meeting of souls and minds rather than bodies: in the case of this particular poem, whether the sonnet is written for a man or woman has little to no influence on its meaning. In the last two lines, Shakespeare brings the poem from the realm of the universal and grand into the sphere of the personal and particular by mentioning “I” (Line 14). Suddenly this deep spiritual love is particular to his own subjective experience but simultaneously connected to all of humanity in the line “I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d” (Line 14).
The Passage of Time
As the sonnet’s argument progresses, the stakes are raised and the poetic tension is developed through the unlikelihood that love will endure against increasingly powerful foes. In line 9, Time is personified as the ultimate enemy of love, the entity that devours everything on Earth that is good and beautiful. Mortal beauty, symbolized by the lovers’ “rosy lips and cheeks” (Line 9) always comes to an end. It is destroyed by aging, so it is at the mercy of time because mortal beauty is superficial and eventually fades. Shakespeare is arguing that a love that depends on youth’s beauty is not love at all, because it does not sustain past the vibrancy of youth.
The lover and the object of his affection are both at the mercy of nature and death. This is represented by the mention of life’s “brief” length (Line 11) that seems to be but a few hours compared to eternity. Shakespeare demonstrates that true love is not oppressed by the laws of time. True love stands strong against life’s vicissitudes, unchanged from the excitement of fresh young love, to the end of life or even apocalypse referred to in the phrase “edge of doom” (Line 12). By pitting love and time against each other, Shakespeare is arriving at the heart of the question he introduced, responding to the reader’s understandable skepticism about love’s endurance. Love is not “Time’s Fool,” (Line 9) meaning that love is not under the control of time, but rather exists outside the bounds of time. The transcending love of this poet is infinite both in its value and in its longevity.
Duality of Human Nature
The clarity and precision of the poem’s tone and style reflect the theme that true love is a duality, or harmonious fulfillment of opposing natures, allowing reason and emotion to find balance. The flirtation with despair is at the edge of every quatrain, because the love here is neither boring, predictable, or conventional, nor is it dangerous and dark. It is rare, special, and has a paradoxical nature. The argument that Shakespeare is presenting here—that true love’s character is resilient, not fleeting—represents the duality of human nature, for a weak love is as weak as its lovers, and a strong love is made strong by the faithfulness of those who profess it. It is not only life’s troubles that disrupt true love, but the foolish and capricious nature of humans as well.
In love, the agonizing inner conflict of humans between the best and the worst of their nature reveals itself most clearly. The lover as the angel and the lover as a devilish figure captures love’s full range of expression, from purifying to corrupting.
The combination of braggadocio and sincerity sets this poem apart from the lovelorn poems of his fellow sonneteers. The fighter and the lover exist side by side, just as true love is not wholly rational nor wholly emotional, but a complementary duality of both. This is shown in Shakespeare’s deft movement between reason and emotion through the quatrains.
Related Titles
By William Shakespeare
