Hi, I'm Rebecca Balcarcel. Let's take a close look at Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare.
This is one of his most famous, and one of my favorites. It starts out like this: "Let
me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds..." Now let's stop here and go back
and piece this together. If we put the first sentence in
modern word order, it would read like this: "Let me not admit impediments to the marriage
of true minds." So let me not, uh, may I never allow this to happen, or let me not may have
a prayerful tone, as in, you know, let me be a good person
today, let me not do this, but I think it has more of a declarative tone, almost as
if the speaker's taking a vow. I will not admit impediments
to the marriage of true minds. Now what does "admit impediments" mean? Well, "admit" means
to let in, like you may be admitted to a building, or an usher may admit you to a wedding ceremony.
So I will not allow in impediments. Impediments are obstacles, so I will not allow in any
obstacles to this marriage of true minds. Now it's worth noting that in the Anglican
marriage ceremony, so if you were getting married in Shakespeare's
time, there would be a priest at the front asking, "Do either of you know of an impediment
that would prevent you from getting married?" And it is
a quite serious question, and the priest will say, you know, "Upon your souls, do you know
of any reason why you shouldn't be wed? Is there any impediment?" And that word is used.
So Shakespeare is speaking of marriage, and is
quite knowledgeable about the church custom of using this language, so this "admit impediments"
echoes the marraige ceremony of the time period. Alright, so I will not admit impediments to
the marriage of true minds. Now what is the marriage of true minds? Well, of course it's
just a marriage of people who are beautifully and deeply
connected, but also the choice to have it be "minds..." It doesn't say hearts and it
doesn't say bodies. Mind. So one of the reasons I love this poem is that it does imply a mental
connection between these two people, uh, even a spiritual
connection, so this is a deep relationship, a genuine relationship. Now let's also look
at the word "true." It's "true minds." Well, "true" is of
course truthful, but also faithful, and in Shakespeare's time it also refers to straight,
as in an arrow that might fly true, straight to the mark, to it's target. So if these minds
are true, it means that they are moral, and also faithful
to eachother. Let's look at the next sentence: "Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds..." So when he says love is not love, at
first we're confused. What? But what he means is that love is not true love if it changes
when it finds change, when it finds in change in the other person, or when conditions change.
It will not change. Love is constant and eternal.
So let's go on, and look at the next section: "Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds, or bends with the remover to remove:" I'm gonna
stop right there because now we've read four lines. This is the first quatrain, as it's
called, four line section of the poem. And you might notice that we have some rhyme going
on. "Minds" rhymes with "finds," and then we have "love"
that's supposed to rhyme with "remove," but, uh, for us it doesn't exactly rhyme in our
ears, but pronounciation does drift and change, so "love" and
"remove" might very well have sounded the same to Shakespeare. In any case, they look
like they rhyme on the page. That means there's a sight rhyme: It looks like it rhymes to
your eyes. So it- it'll do.
Now, besides this being the end of a quatrain, uh, I need to spend some time with this language,
uh, "Or bends with the remover to remove:" Remember I said that true meant straight in
one of the meanings? Well here we have bending, so now
Shakespeare has created a, you know, contrast here. Bending is bad. We wanna be true and
straight. So he says love does not... True love does not
bend with the remover to remove. Now who's the remover? Some, you know, evil person is
the remover? Well, the remover can be time. Time removes the bloom of youth, physically,
and you know, time changes things. So love is not supposed to
follow along if the remover takes away something like physical beauty. Love does not change
in that case. Another meaning for "bend" can be to be bent
to someone's will, to be going along with that person. So he's saying here that true
love does not go along with the remover to remove. It doesn't get convinced to get on
that bandwagon with the remover. Now "remover to remove:" "Remove"
in Shakespeare's time means to move to a different place. So let's say the tide is coming in,
and someone might say, "Oh, we need to remove to higher
ground. We need to move, go to a new location." So it could also mean that love does not bend
with the remover to remove. It doesn't go away. It will stay, it will be constant, it
will be faithful, it will not remove to some new location.
Now that makes a remover someone who does move away, so the remover maybe a lover who
has left, or an unfaithful lover who has moved to another,
you know, bed, for example, another heart maybe. The remover might be someone who has
changed position, and true love does not go along with that. Now we're on the next line:
"O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests, and
is never shaken;" this is fairly self-explanatory. "Oh no," saying, in contrast, real love is
like this: It is an ever fixed mark, meaning a
permenant, unchanging, eternal mark. Now what's a mark? We think of a mark on the wall or
something, but for Shakespeare's time, a mark is a sea-mark, so it's a landmark in the sea,
it's a star or a lighthouse or something that can be seen
from a ship, by which the captain can determine the location of the ship. So love is now this
ever-fixed mark, this fixed position that we can
navigate from. The most typical kind of mark out in the sea will be either a star or a
lighthouse. In fact the beacon of the lighthouse will be the mark, and from that we can figure
out where we are. "O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, that
looks on tempests, and is never shaken;" so now the beacon is looking on tempests, which
is storms, but it is never shaken. And indeed a lighthouse
supposed to be very strong, stands up against all kinds of weather, provides guidance in
the midst of storms or fog. Love is like that. Another meaning for "looks on" is not only
to just see the storms, but to withstand. So the love
can withstand the storms and never be shaken. Now let's finish up this quatrain: "O no;
it is an ever-fixed 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." This is a little trickier right here. This is still speaking of love.
It is the star. So remember that the stars are fixed in the sky,
compared to the planets that seem to be moving against the backdrop of the fixed star. Stars
stay in one place, and love is like that. So it is a
star to every wandering bark. Now a bark is a boat. In Spanish it's very easy to tell.
"Barco" is "boat." Now the boat could be wandering, and this reminds me of that word, "bending,"
that bending and wandering... This is not good.
We want straight and true. Love will guide that wandering bark. Love is like a star that
the wandering boat can fix upon, like the north star. We, by
the north star we can navigate. So love is the star to every wandering bark who's worth's
unknown, though- although his height be taken. Now "whose" refers to the star. This is the
star whose worth's unknown, so the star's worth cannot
be measured, it can't be quantified, and love is like that too. You cannot measure the value
of love. Okay, so now, what about the rest of the
sentence, that talks about the height? It says, "Whose worth's unknown, although his
height be taken." Now this refers to calculating the altitude of a star, and then, again, navigating
from that location. So throughout this few lines
we've got references to boats and navigation and lighthouses and all that. It's a theme.
So although we can take a star's height, we still cannot
put a price on it. That concludes the second quatrain. Let me refresh our memories. Speaking
of love, he says, "O no; it is an ever-fixed 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." You with me so far? Alright, let's move on
to the next set of lines: "Love's not Time's fool, though
rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come;" alright, so that's one sentence.
Love's not time's fool. A fool... It refers to a jester. So love's not time's fool. That
means love does not trail around after time making
jokes the way a jester does. In Shakespeare's time, the jester would go around behind the
king, making jokes, mimicking the king, even, to get people
to laugh, and to see the contrast between the silly fool and the regal, serious king.
But love is not time's fool. Love is not playing that role in relationship to time, even though
rosy lips and cheeks come within the compass of time. So
rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. Lots of kuh kuh kuh. Sickle,
compass, come. It's very nice. Some consanance there. So
rosy lips and rosy cheeks will pass, will fade. And referring to it as a rose makes
it temporary even more, because a rose is a plant that does indeed have a season of
blooming and then die. So the rosy cheek, or the rosy lips, rather,
will fade. And time has a sickle. That's a curved blade that's used for cutting things
down. And the usual image we have is that death is using a
sickle, or a scythe sometimes, to cut down your life, cut you down, harvest you, in a
way. So time here has a bending sickle. Now remember we had the word "bend" earlier. Now
we have an echo of that here, and bending is always bad compared
to the true, you know, the straight, uh, the true minds. So love's not time's fool, though
rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass
come. "Compass" here means within the reach of that sickle, that blade, uh, in the area
where the sickle is working. So love does not come within that, but the rosy cheeks
do. So yes, uh, certain things will pass away, physical beauty one
of them, but love doesn't care. Love is not affected. Next sentence: "Love alters not
with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the
edge of doom." So love does not change, alters not, with his brief hours and weeks. Now this
"his," it might be referring to time. So love does not change even with time's brief hours
and weeks. Who cares about hours and weeks? Love
is eternal. Or, "his" could refer to love, so love's brief hours and weeks. I don't like
that meaning as much, but if it were intended, it would mean
that love doesn't change with brief hours or weeks. And so, that works too. But probably,
love alters not with time's brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of
doom. To bear it out means to stick it out, or to endure. So
we bear out problems 'till they get resolved. And here love bears it out, endures all the
way to the edge of doom. Now doom typically would mean
doomsday, and doomsday can be an apocalyptic kind of day, like an end of time's judgement
day, or it can be the personal doomsday. There was a saying, something like, "Death's your
doomsday," so it's a private doomsday. So love endures
until the edge of death. And remember how Shakespeare referred to the marriage ceremony
earlier, with "admits impediments," that's used in the
marriage ceremony? Well, also in the marriage ceremony, we have the line, "until death do
us part." So this is... Love is enduring all the way to death, to the edge of doom. Or,
it may mean the edge of the grave, all the way to the edge
of the grave. Love goes all the way there, which is intended to mean, "will not change
throughout your entire life." Alright, so now we've completed
another quatrain, another set of four lines. Let me review: "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." And now we have the final two lines that are rhymed. This is a rhymed couplet
that, you know, shuts the lid on the sonnet: " If this be
error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved." So he says if this is
not true, then well, I never wrote a poem, and no person ever loved anybody. So it has
to be true. This is a cute little logic to end with. But let me
examine further with you. "If this be error..." Now this word, "error," this is a legal word
in Shakespeare's time, so an error refers to something
like a mistrial, that something occurred in the trial of a criminal or a civil case that
would make us have to do it over again. So an error is a fairly serious word to use.
And it might mean that if this whole poem were in error, you
know, and the word "this" refers to all the previous ideas and assertions... So if this
be error, and upon me proved... That means if I'm proved wrong,
and this is another legal term isn't it? To prove is something we talk about in the courtroom.
So we have error and we have proof, and there are a couple other legal words. "Admit impediments"
would fall under that, so there's a legal flavor to the whole poem, and that gives it
a certain seriousness, how important this is and how truthful we need to be, because
this is taken seriously, almost as if it's a legal proceeding. "So
if this error, and upon me proved," (if I'm proved wrong) "I never writ" (so I never wrote).
Now we know he wrote, because he wrote this poem, and of
course we know he wrote lots of other things. But there's another flavor to this word, "writ."
The usual phrase that included both the word "writ" and the word "error" was a "writ of
error". So if you found out that some technicality
was not observed in a courtroom, then you could file a writ of error. This is almost
like a lawsuit saying this trial was not done correctly. So a writ
of error will cause an entire trial to be done over again, so it's an important document.
And to have the word "writ" very close to the word "error" is lots of fun, really, because
Shakespeare can evoke that association, and at the same
time say what he wants to say, which is, "If this is wrong, well then I never wrote anything."
And the last phrase, "no man ever loved." And we could
almost insert the word "truly loved" here. No man ever really fell in real love, if this
preceding assertion that love is eternal... If that's not true then nobody ever really
loved anybody. Okay, so I hope you feel like you understand
this poem more deeply. I sure do, 'cause I did a lot of studying to bring all this information
to you, so thanks for that opportunity, and I hope to
see you in another video.