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The Full Text of “Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
1Let me not to the marriage of true minds
2Admit impediments. Love is not love
3Which alters when it alteration finds,
4Or bends with the remover to remove.
5O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
6That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
7It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
8Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
9Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
10Within his bending sickle's compass come;
11Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
12But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom.
13 If this be error and upon me prov'd,
14 I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Introduction
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"Sonnet 116" was written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. Most likely written in 1590s, during a craze for sonnets in English literature, it was not published until 1609. Although Shakespeare's sonnets were not popular during his lifetime, "Sonnet 116" has gone on to become one of the most universally beloved and celebrated poems in the English language. In magnificent, moving terms, the poem describes true love as an enduring, unbending commitment between people: a bond so powerful that only death can reshape it. Though the poem is moving and romantic, it risks at times falling into hyperbole or cliché: some readers may doubt the plausibility—or the sincerity—of its depiction of love.
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Summary
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I don't want to accept that anything can come between two people who truly love each other. Love isn't true love if it changes when things get tough, or if it lets itself be diminished. No, instead love is a steady guide, like a lighthouse that even during a storm is never shaken. It is the star that guides ships as they wander at sea: its value is too great to be measured, but it is still used by sailors to help them navigate. Love is not fooled by time, though pink lips and cheeks are diminished in time. Love doesn't change as hours or weeks go by, but continues on, unchanged, until death itself. If I'm wrong—and if my own behavior serves as evidence that I'm wrong—then I've never written a poem and no one has ever loved.
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Themes
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Love and Change
Over the course of Sonnet 116, the speaker makes a number of passionate claims about what love is—and what it isn’t. For the speaker (traditionally assumed to be Shakespeare himself, and thus a man), true love doesn't change over time: instead, it goes on with the same intensity forever. The speaker establishes this argument from the poem’s opening lines, boldly declaring that love isn't really love at all if it bends or sways in response to roadblocks. Instead, he argues that love weathers all storms. It's like a star that sailors use to navigate, providing an unmoving reference point they can use to plot their course across the globe. Love, then, is something that perseveres through "impediments," obstacles, and difficulties without losing any of its passion or commitment.
As the poem progresses, the speaker considers more kinds of change and extends his initial argument. In lines 9-10, he adds that true love doesn't falter even as beauty fades—represented in the poem by the image of youthful, rosy cheeks losing their vitality. Because love isn't primarily concerned with the body, it's not affected by aging. In lines 11-12, the speaker generalizes his argument even further by claiming that love doesn't change under any circumstances. It goes on, he claims, “to the edge of doom.” In other words, only when a lover dies does love finally change or end.
The speaker is so confident in his argument that he’s willing to issue a bet: if he’s wrong, then love itself is impossible, and “no man [has] ever loved.” In making this bet, he puts up his own behavior as evidence. Here, the speaker acknowledges that he isn't simply an observer of love, but himself a lover. His own relationships might be measured against the standard he's advanced here—and he offers confident assurance that his love does live up to this standard. This means that, beneath the sonnet's generalizations about what love is and isn’t, the poem is itself a declaration of love.
At this point it's important to note that this sonnet is part of a sequence of love poems, traditionally believed to be addressed to a young man. Their relationship, as depicted in the Sonnets as a whole, is tumultuous, full of infidelity and gusts of passion. There is considerable disagreement among scholars as to whether this context should affect the interpretation of Sonnet 116. If it doesn’t, the poem is a powerful statement about love, addressed to all readers in all times. But if it does, the poem comes across instead as an attempt to repair a damaged relationship, a personal plea directed to a particular person; the speaker is trying to prove to the young man that he does love him in spite of everything, and that his love won't change.
For a generous reader, this will be a romantic statement of affection. For a more skeptical reader, it raises some questions. The speaker hasn't just described love as something unchanging; the poem paints a picture of love as a sort of eternal ideal far from the messy reality of real people's lives. It's a star—unattainable and inhuman. In a way, this image of love ceases to be something that humans can actually build and instead becomes something they can only admire from a distance.
The speaker has engaged in hyperbole to defend his position, invoking all lovers in all times in line 14. This, along with the poem’s idealism, might make the speaker feel a bit unreliable; some readers may wonder how realistic the speaker’s account of love really is, and find it grandiose instead of intimate. The poem’s claims about love can't necessarily be taken on face value, then: they should be evaluated for their sincerity and plausibility—and in these respects, they may be found wanting.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
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Lines 1-2
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments."Sonnet 116" begins with a vow: the speaker of the poem promises—to himself and to the reader—that he will not "admit impediments" to the "marriage of true minds." The fact that the speaker begins the poem with a vow raises some questions. A reader could imagine the poem almost as a prayer: something the speaker says to himself, in privacy, as he ponders the beauty and majesty of true love. Alternatively, a reader could imagine the poem as a passionate declaration: something the speaker says to the person he loves.
In the latter case, the poem and its meditation on love become more complex as readers think about the speaker's motivations. One might wonder why, under what circumstances, a statement as grandiose, beautiful, and moving as "Sonnet 116" would be necessary. In other words, what is the speaker responding to?
Both readings the poem—that the speaker is simply thinking to himself, or that he is addressing a specific romantic partner—are possible. A major challenge for interpreting this poem, then, will be deciding why the speaker says the things he does—and to whom.
In either case, as he begins his vow, the speaker uses a series of rather ambiguous phrases. The reader may wonder what actually constitutes a "marriage of true minds"—or what it would mean "to admit impediments" into such a marriage.
The speaker uses the word "marriage" in the normal way: the legal union between two people. But also he uses it in a metaphorical sense: to refer to a dedicated union between people or things, independent of wedding vows. The use of the word "minds" at the end of line 1, rather than, say, "people," underscores this metaphorical sense: "minds" can't get married in a church, but they can be closely joined together in love or friendship.
This metaphorical sense is potentially key to understanding the poem. The first 127 of Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to an aristocratic young man with whom the poet has an intimate relationship. The young man and the poet can't be legally married, but their relationship might be profound enough to justify being described metaphorically as a marriage.
At the end of line 1, the speaker lays out the conditions for such a marriage: the parties involved must be "true minds." In other words, they must be true to each other.
In line 2, the speaker concludes his vow, hoping that no "impediments" will interrupt the relationship between these "true minds." The word impediments strongly recalls the language of the marriage service in Renaissance England, as outlined in the Book of Common Prayer, in which the minister would say to the two people getting married, "I require and charge you ... that if either of you do know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, that ye confess it." The opening lines of the poem reenact this marriage ceremony—staging, if only in the speaker's fantasy, a marriage between him and his beloved. One can imagine the opening lines of the poem as the speaker's response to the minister: he does not (and will not) admit any impediments.
It's worth noting that, at the heart of these wedding vows, there is a requirement to confess: the bride and groom must tell the minister if there's a problem. The speaker imposes a similar demand upon himself, asking himself to "admit" any impediments. Here, the word "admit" means two things at once: first, to concede or acknowledge the existence of something; second, to allow something to enter. This means that the speaker's vow might be interpreted in two ways.
First, he will not acknowledge any impediments in the marriage of true minds—because no such impediments exist. Second, he will not allow any impediments to poison or transform this marriage going forward. Most likely, both interpretations are valid and both senses are at work at once. The speaker is simultaneously enacting a marriage between "true minds" and expressing his highest hopes for that marriage—that it will continue unchanged, indefinitely. In either case, the enjambment between lines 1 and 2 reinforce his point: his sentence flows past the impediment of the line break, without pausing to observe it.
The first line of the poem is metrically ambiguous, though the poem overall is written in iambic pentameter. The first line of the poem could arguably be read as follows:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
This clearly doesn't align with perfect iambic pentameter, perhaps sonically reflecting a kind of "impediment" that the speaker argues love will overcome.
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Lines 2-4
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
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Lines 5-8
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. -
Lines 9-12
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 ev'n to the edge of doom. -
Lines 13-14
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Symbols
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Mark
When the speaker mentions a "mark" in line 5, he has in mind a specific kind of mark: a seamark, i.e. a beacon or lighthouse. These structures serve to warn sailors to avoid certain areas filled with reefs or rocky outcroppings on which they might run aground. This warning is potentially life-saving information during a bad storm or in the dark, when a ship might otherwise enter dangerous waters without realizing it. The lighthouse and the beacon are thus frequently symbols for positive forces that guide people through the dark and difficult patches of their life, showing them dangers they might not otherwise see. By associating love with such marks, then, the poem argues that love itself is a solid, guiding force in people's lives.
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Star
After comparing love to a beacon or lighthouse in line 5, the speaker compares it to a star in line 7. In many ways, the two metaphors are similar. Like the lighthouse, Renaissance sailors used stars to help them navigate, measuring their own position against the height of the stars. However, there are important differences between the two symbols: a lighthouse is man-made, something you can touch. Stars, by contrast, are distant—inhuman and unreachable.
In invoking the star as a metaphor for love, Shakespeare plays on an ancient philosophical tradition, which dates back to the Greek philosopher Plato. In this tradition, there are different kinds of love arranged in a hierarchy. The highest kind of love exceeds human comprehension; like the star in "Sonnet 116," its "worth's unknown." The star thus serves as a symbol for a kind of ideal, perfect love—beyond what anyone might achieve in a real relationship.
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Sickle
A sickle is a sharp, hooked agricultural tool. Before the invention of mechanical reapers, it was used to harvest grains and cereals, which a farmer would bend down to cut at the root. In traditional depictions, death carries a sickle or scythe: he is the harvester of souls, who, like the farmer cuts down people at the root. The sickle is thus often used as a symbol of mortality or of the fragility of human life, which can be cut short easily and unexpectedly.
This is how the sickle is being used in this poem, too. Here, time uses its sickle much as death would: it harvests youthful beauty—represented by the "rosy lips and cheeks" in line 9—and transforms the body with age, much as harvesting a lush field reduces it to a barren place. Love, according to the speaker, is immune to time and its sickle; it will not diminish or grow weak with age, and is stronger than the frail, mortal body.
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Hyperbole
The speaker of Sonnet 116 has a number of significant ideas about love—ideas that are worth taking seriously and evaluating. However, his presentation of those ideas doesn't always have the same seriousness and credibility. At several moments in the poem, the speaker lapses into hyperbole, making rather some outlandish claims.
For example, in the poem's final lines, the speaker says that his ideas about love are so solid, so indisputable, that, if he's wrong, no one has ever been in love before. This is a broad and unsupported generalization—a generalization which includes the whole of human history until the present. This would be difficult to prove in any kind of convincing fashion, but, of course, the speaker isn't particularly interested in proving anything. Rather, he wants to impress the reader/listener with the force of his passion and his rhetorical commitment—that is, with his willingness to stray into hyperbole.
However, as is often the case with hyperbole, the extravagance of the speaker's words may have the opposite effect: instead of building confidence in the speaker, it may cause us to question his passion—which might sound a bit inflated, pretentious, or puffed up.
This final moment of hyperbole is in keeping with the tone of the poem so far, in that the speaker has been very rigid and idealistic in his description of love throughout. Love is "an ever-fixed mark" that "never" falters; in fact, it lasts even to the "edge of doom"—that is, until death or doomsday. One could argue that this idea of love is so unrealistic as to be meaningless; all relationships change and have the potential for disturbances, even if minor. To say that relationships based on real love never feel even the slightest tremor of trouble seems a bit naive. Again, though, the speaker wants to impress upon the reader the sheer force of his own beliefs (and, it follows, the intensity of his own love for the potential recipient of the poem).
How someone interprets this final moment of seeming exaggeration, then, reflects on their feelings about the poem as a whole: whether they think that the speaker is being sincere and genuinely romantic in his efforts to describe a transcendent love which human beings should strive for, or if he is being so dramatic that his words lose some of their power.
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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End-Stopped Line
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Metaphor
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Personification
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Caesura
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Polyptoton
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Marriage
- Impediments
- Alteration
- Remover
- Ever-fixed
- Tempests
- Bark
- Sickle
- Compass
Marriage-
Literally, the word "marriage" describes a ceremonial union between two people—often licensed by the state and the church. During Shakespeare's life, the concept of marriage was in transition. In the medieval period and the early part of the Renaissance, marriage was often a formal arrangement between families, which they entered into to transfer property or to secure political advantage. However, during and after Shakespeare's life, a new concept of marriage emerged, which stressed companionship—that is, the love and bonds between two people. Shakespeare uses the word in that sense here, emphasizing the way that marriage is a matter of shared values and mutual sympathy.
This new kind of marriage also opens up the possibility of using the word metaphorically. Instead of referring exclusively to a religious or legal contract between two people, marriage might refer to any intimate bond between people or things. The speaker may use the word in this metaphorical sense here. After all, the lover that Shakespeare addresses throughout the first 126 of his sonnets is a young man: he and the speaker cannot literally get married. The speaker may be interested in asserting that their relationship is like a marriage, even if it lacks the stamp of legal approval that would make it an actual marriage.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
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Form
"Sonnet 116" follows the form of a typical Shakespearean sonnet. Though Shakespeare was not the first person to write sonnets in this particular style, he popularized the form—so much so that it was eventually named after him. The Shakespearean sonnet is divided into two sections, formally: the first twelve lines of the poem—which can be broken down further into three quatrains—and the final two, which make up a rhyming couplet.
The shift between line 12 and line 13 is called the volta or turn, and this shift in the organization of the rhyme also marks a shift in its content. In the Petrarchan sonnet—an older form, from which the Shakespearean sonnet diverges—the volta falls between lines 8 and 9. That means that the speaker in a Petrarchan sonnet has a lot of space before the poem ends—six lines, to be exact—to reconsider, to change their mind, to explore new possibilities. For this reason, it often feels like the speaker of a Petrarchan sonnet is having an argument with themselves.
By contrast, in the Shakespearean sonnet, like we have here, the volta comes very close to the end of the poem—there isn't much space for the speaker of the poem to reconsider or to change course. For this reason, the volta of a Shakespearean sonnet often serves to confirm or summarize the rest of the poem. This is certainly the case in "Sonnet 116," where the poem's final lines reaffirm—to the point of being hyperbolic—how certain the speaker is of his position.
While the "if" that begins line 13 could be read as the speaker granting a moment of hesitation, perhaps allowing himself space for reconsideration, this is abruptly countered in line 14: he is not arguing with himself, but rather setting himself up to hammer his point home even more emphatically. If he's wrong, then he's never written anything and no one has ever been in love—two things that are patently not true. As such, he must not be wrong, and the poem's form itself refuses to entertain any arguments to the contrary.
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Meter
Like all of Shakespeare's sonnets, "Sonnet 116" is in iambic pentameter. Indeed, it contains a number of lines that are perfectly iambic, adhering to the meter without relying on the slight substitutions that often mark iambic writing. For example, line 7 is exceptionally smooth:
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Here, the regularity of the meter mimics the solidity and dependability of the star itself. In its smooth, unblemished meter, the line becomes an image of love, embodying its changeless nature.
Not all of the poem is quite this smooth—there are other lines where the meter is slightly more irregular. For example, lines 6 and 8 have feminine endings:
That looks | on temp- | ests and | is nev- | er shaken;
And:
Whose worth's | unknown, | although | his height | be taken.
These lines contain an extra syllable, making them each 11 syllables long. However, this extra syllable doesn't significantly disrupt the rhythm of the lines: the stresses still all fall in the correct spots, maintaining the iambic "da DUM" rhythm. These metrical substitutions—and others like them—contribute to the sonic richness of the poem, but they do not significantly affect its interpretation.
The first two lines of the poem are more complicated and, potentially, more significant. They contain a number of unusual and suggestive substitutions:
Let me | not to | the mar- | riage of | true minds
Admit | imped- | iments. | Love is | not loveThe first line is metrically ambiguous: different readers may place the stresses in different places. For instance, one might plausibly scan the first three words of the line as an anapest: "let me not." This comes with some disadvantages: for instance, it reduces the total number of stresses in the line to four, rather than the five one generally finds, even in the most irregular iambic lines.
However, one might plausibly doubt whether this line is iambic at all: there is only one clear iamb in the line, in the third foot, "the mar." Unlike many of Shakespeare's sonnets, "Sonnet 116" does not immediately establish a strong iambic rhythm and then, subsequently, build in variations. Instead, it starts in rhythmic chaos and then gradually rights itself, slowly building an iambic rhythm.
This rhythm emerges in the first three feet of line 2—though it is quickly troubled again, with a trochaic substitution in foot 4: "Love is." It's not all that unusual to find a trochee in this position, especially following a caesura. But it is striking that the cause of this metrical variation is the word "Love"—which, the speaker, argues is the thing which least causes variation and change. In other words, there is a tension between the poem's argument, its content, and its form in the opening lines of the poem: even as the speaker asserts that love brooks no change or alteration, his lines are full of metrical changes. One might go so far as to describe these impediments: hiccups that catch and perturb a careful reader.
In a sense, though, this tension between form and content reinforces the speaker's point. Love does not change when it encounters difficulties or challenges, he argues. So too, his poem perseveres through its initial metrical difficulties, eventually establishing a smooth and effective iambic rhythm. The metrical disturbances of the first two lines model for the reader the conflicts and troubles that inevitably crop up in every relationship—and the poem itself models how love overcomes those difficulties.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Sonnet 116" follows the standard rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, for the most part, and can be divided into three quatrains and a final couplet:
ABABCDCDEFEFBB
Throughout, the speaker uses strong, perfect rhymes. In his rhyming, at least, the speaker is confident and smooth, fully capable of making his argument—and making it sing. For modern readers, this may come as a surprise. A number of the poem's rhymes seem like they ought to be treated as slant rhymes—"love" and "remove" in lines 2 and 4; "come" and "doom" in lines 10 and 12. For Shakespeare's early readers, however, these would've been full rhymes: in the centuries since the poem was written, English pronunciation has shifted, so that words like "love" and "remove" no longer rhyme.
In the final two lines of the poem, the organization of the rhyme scheme shifts—and breaks from the usual pattern of the Shakespearean sonnet. Traditionally, the final two lines of a Shakespearean sonnet are rhymed GG, introducing a new rhyme sound at the very end of the poem. "Sonnet 116" fails to do that, returning instead to the rhyme of lines 2 and 4 (with a slight difference—"lov'd" instead of "love"). This return to the poem's earlier rhyme sound has several effects. First, it calls the reader's mind back to the poem's initial argument: that love does not change, even when faced with difficulty. Second, it reinforces that argument: just as love does not change, so too the poem resists novelty, returning to the same rhyme sounds at critical moments.
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Speaker
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Although the speaker of "Sonnet 116" refers to himself several times in the poem, the reader learns almost nothing about him—except that he is a person with strong ideas about love. Indeed, the reader cannot even be sure that he is the right pronoun for the speaker based on the available evidence in the poem. There is, however, a long tradition among scholars of reading Shakespeare's Sonnets as a semi-autobiographical text, in which the speaker recounts two love affairs, first with an aristocratic young man (the "fair youth") and later with a mysterious woman, often referred to as the "dark lady."
If one reads "Sonnet 116" in the context of the full series, it becomes part of the complex—often tumultuous—relationship between the speaker and the young man. In that case, the poem is not only about love, it is also part of a relationship, a proclamation that the speaker makes in order to protect his relationship with the young man.
However, there is considerable controversy among scholars about whether it is appropriate to read Shakespeare's Sonnets as a sequence. It remains viable to interpret "Sonnet 116" outside of the context of the speaker's relationship with the young man, and instead as a passionate and grand statement about love in general.
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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Setting
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"Sonnet 116" provides little information about its setting. Though a reader may assume that the poem is set in Renaissance London, likely during the 1590s when Shakespeare wrote it, the poem itself resolutely refuses to allude to its location in time or space. (Of course, there are a few clues in the poem that it belongs to an earlier historical moment: for instance, sailors no longer rely on the stars to navigate; they use GPS!) The poem refuses to specify its setting because it seeks to make a general, universal statement about love—a statement which will always be true, in any setting. It presents itself stripped of setting so that any one might encounter the poem and apply it to their own life.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
Literary Context
"Sonnet 116" was most likely written in the 1590s, during a craze for sonnets. Though poets like Thomas Wyatt began to write sonnets in English in the 1530s and 1540s, the form did not become widely popular until the 1590s, after the posthumous publication of Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil to Stella.
This means that the sonnet arrived in England relatively late: by the time Wyatt began writing sonnets in the early sixteenth century, the form had been popular in Italy and France for several hundred years. The form thus came to English with baggage, in the forms of many tropes and clichés associated with it. For instance, sonnets were usually organized in long sequences—chains of many related poems which, in a certain light, would tell a story (usually a story of unrequited love). 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.
This context is evident in Shakespeare's poem, though he has worked to reverse them. Instead of describing a desperate, unrequited love, Shakespeare's speaker describes a union that binds together two willing participants in a long-term, stable union. And instead of an out-of-control ship, the speaker presents his readers in lines 5-8 images of safe, responsible navigation.
"Sonnet 116" is thus a poem that's highly self-conscious about its own literary context: it relies on the reader's knowledge of that context for some of its effect. The poem is all the more moving and beautiful because it refuses a tradition of desperate, unrequited love to instead depict what stable happiness might look like.
Historical Context
The 1590s, when Shakespeare most likely wrote "Sonnet 116," were a time of relative peace and prosperity in English society. Queen Elizabeth—an imposing figure and a unifying force in the country—was at the height of her power. English forces had also recently defeated the Spanish Armada, substantially diminishing the threat of foreign invasion.
In this climate, English poets turned their attention to matters of the heart. Indeed, several of Shakespeare's most celebrated texts dealing with love belong to the decade, including Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It.
However, this peaceful period was short lived: by 1603, Elizabeth had died and the crown had passed to the much less popular, much more divisive James I; by the 1640s, the country had descended into civil war. A poem like "Sonnet 116" is thus a document of a society in transition, descending into serious conflict—yet enjoying a final moment of peace and calm before the storm sets in.
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More “Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” Resources
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External Resources
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"My Galley Charged With Forgetfulness" by Thomas Wyatt — Thomas Wyatt's poem "My Gallery Charged With Forgetfulness," whose tropes Shakespeare reworks in "Sonnet 116."
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Patrick Stewart Reads "Sonnet 116" — Actor Patrick Stewart reads "Sonnet 116."
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Linda Gregerson Introduces "Sonnet 116" — Contemporary poet Linda Gregerson introduces "Sonnet 116" for a general audience at the Atlantic magazine.
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Shakespeare's Accent: How Did the Bard Really Sound? — An interview with actor Ben Crystal, discussing how pronunciation has shifted between Shakespeare's time and our own, including a discussion of some of the rhymes in this poem.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Shakespeare
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