Sonnet 116 dramatizes the nature of love, not ordinary affection but abiding love that he defines as the "marriage of true minds" that cannot be destroyed by fickle time.
First Quatrain
In the first quatrain, the speaker of Shakespeare sonnet 116 refers to love as “the marriage of true minds,” and alludes to the biblical injunction from Matthew 19:6 heard at wedding ceremonies, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
The speaker claims that love is ever steadfast and does not change even though some might think they see a reason for change. Also, real love cannot be disfigured in order to try to “remove it.”
The use of repetition “Love is not love,” “alters when it alteration finds,” and “bends with the remover to remove,” reinforces the idea of constancy on which the speaker is focusing throughout the sonnet.
Second Quatrain
In the second quatrain, the speaker metaphorically likens love to a polestar or the North Star, “an ever-fixed mark,” which serves as a guide for ships. This polestar is “an ever-fixed mark,” because even if the seas become rough and the ships are tossed about, the star itself remains unshaken, still capable of guiding the ship. And even though the distance of the polestar may be calculated by man, its value can never be determined.
The speaker, thus, is claiming that love has a kind of staying power that “stands unshaken midst the crash of breaking worlds,” as the great yogi/poet Paramahansa Yogananda said of man’s soul when it knows its union with the Oversoul. The speaker of sonnet 116 is likening love to the union of the individual soul with the Divine.
Third Quatrain
In the third quatrain, the speaker addresses the issue of love regarding the passage of time. The speaker declares that time cannot undermine love, because “Love’s not Time’s fool.” Even though the body comes under time’s power to change, love is not changed by anything time can do: “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
Even though the “rosy lips and cheeks” change and whither with age, love remains until death for those who have a “marriage of true minds.”
Couplet
In the couplet, the speaker implies that he is so sure of what he has just dramatized about the nature of true love, that if anyone can prove him wrong, then he never wrote and no one ever loved. This assertion places his potential adversary in a very difficult position, for we know he has written, and we also know others have loved.
Other articles on Shakespeare:
Sonnet Commentaries
Sonnet 1, Sonnet 2, Sonnet 3, Sonnet 4, Sonnet 5, Sonnet 6, Sonnet 7, Sonnet 8, Sonnet 9, Sonnet 10, Sonnet 11, Sonnet 12, Sonnet 18, Sonnet 19, Sonnet 116, Sonnet 126, Sonnet 130
