Sonnet 116

Question 1

What type of poem is this?

Answer 1

Shakespearean Sonnet

Question 2

What is the theme of the poem?

Answer 2

Love in its most ideal form, love conquers, love remains and can withstand anything, love is eternal and unchanging.

Question 3

First Quatrain

| 3.a Quote an example of a literary device in line one.

Answer 3

marriage of true minds

Question 4

First Quatrain

| .b What literary device is it?

Answer 4

Metaphor

Question 5

.c What is described in this literary device?

Answer 5

suggests the union between 2 people, (where love/mind is true - unchanging when circumstances change) idealistic. It alludes to that of the wedding ceremony.

Question 6

4.a Explain in your own words
“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove”

Answer 6

“Love is not love” paradox, saying what love is not, love does not change when circumstances change or when one person changes/is unfaithful.

Question 7

4.b What does the rhetorical repetition (in the lines above) stress? |

Answer 7

it reinforces the earlier metaphor of marriage

Question 8

Second Quatrain

5. What do the words “O, no!” convey?

Answer 8

Recognition of great impediments, a shift in mood, going to state what love is after exclamation

Question 9

Quote a phrase to prove the constancy of true love.

Answer 9

“it is an ever fixed mark”

Question 10

Explain in your own words

“It is the star to every wandering bark”

Answer 10

Love is the guidance to every lost ship, when the marriage is going through difficulties/changes it is important to keep eyes fixed on the ‘north star’ that will guide you through the storms or difficulties.

Question 11

7.b How does question 7.a link up with the hazards faced by sailors during that time?

Answer 11

The stars gave them a sense of direction during the night time. It was their navigation. The ships faced rough waters and stormy seas and the light-house would indicate when they are close to shore, to stay way which would keep them from ship-wrecking.

Question 12

Explain in your own words

“Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken”

Answer 12

At the time stars were a mystical thing, they did not know what the stars were made off, although measurements could be calculated (elevation above the horizon, helped measure the ship’s latitude). Suggesting that love could be measured to some degree, but does not mean that we fully understand it - Love’s actual worth cannot be known, it remains a mystery.

Question 13

hird Quatrain
~ 9.a Comment on line 9
“Love’s not Time’s fool”

Answer 13

Love is not submissive to to time, Love goes beyond time; love is not at the mercy of time, Love and time is personified.

Question 14

What literary device is used and what are the two immediate implications?

Answer 14

Personification. Time is pictured as the Grim Reaper, reaping the youth. Physical beauty may fade as time passes by, but the love remains and is still overpowering even-though the beauty is no longer.

Question 15

To whom or what does the word “his” in line 10 refer?

Answer 15

Time/ Grim Reaper

Question 16

To what does the metaphor of the “Brief hours and weeks” refer?

Answer 16

Lifespan of a person

Question 17

Rhyming Couplet

12. To which definite conclusion does the poet come?

Answer 17

In the final couplet he declares that if he is mistaken about the constant, unmovable nature of love he must take back all his writings on love. And that no man has ever really loved.

Question 18

What does the poet mean by saying — if this can be “proved upon” him?

Question 19

Explain the final line of the poem in your own words.