commentary on let me not


Home									return to text	Sonnet index

	Sonnet CXVI: 'Let me not....'

Let me not....	You must imagine that the poem is part of a discussion. That is, something has already been said; a discussion about the nature of 'Love' is already going on ( and, indeed, culturally and historically speaking, it has been for ages - what is Love really? is a perennial, endless question, albeit urgent for the individual) So, the first line establishes an individual position on this question - but in response to an already existing argument. The first line then reads something like: Far be it from me to speak against spiritual love or I do not want to speak against (spiritual) love (whatever somebody else might want to do). (The effect of this last reading is partly created by the expectation of an iambic metre - Let me (~ /) - although the line as it goes on continues to be irregular.) If this reading is allowed, then the tone already has something defensive about it - reinforced by the negative definitions of the first quatrain - ..let me not..., love is not* love...* (The sonnet is normally read as an impersonal, Platonic definition of Love - this defensiveness makes that impersonal definition as something desired, not necessarily achieved. That is, the sonnet, although attempting an impersonality, is jumping into that tone under purely personal pressure. This reading has the virtue, at least, of giving the poem some drama - which seems a fair take on a poem by Shakespeare!
marriage	So - what is marriage ? Here, it is the 'marriage of true minds' - but that is in contrast to the marriage of bodies - physical love. Is it implied that marriage usually has more to do with bodies than with minds? After all, who has ever been divorced through mental infidelity? The poem wishes to imply that minds are the true (only?) arena of love. And related to this is the mimicry of the marriage service: admit impediments... - compare to the just cause and impediment that can halt a marriage ceremony even today. (But, in contradistinction to things to do with the mind, that ceremony is merely physical and social. True marriage is spiritual, mental. - So, below its apparent confidence of tone, the poem is engaged with re-definition - and if you take it as addressed to the young man of the sequence, then it is arguing for a definition of love which is different to that usually worked with by the rest of society.) (Genuine question: would this poem be acceptable under the terms of Clause 28?)
true minds	true minds in two senses - (i) minds which are true, as opposed to bodies, which are not faithful, by nature, - and: (ii) the question concerns the distinction between true and untrue minds - there is no impediment for true minds. The trick of the poem is to gloss over the distinction - which implies minds are necessarily true (i.e believe in minds, not bodies - an argument, not an easy assumption)
impediments	The poem implies difficulties, while arguing that they do not exist, really. Think of the concessionary nature of the verb: admit.
love is not love..	The opening quatrain proceeds by negative definition - that is, by saying what love is not.( and does that sound defensive?) [..not.. not..}
..alters.. alteration..	Isn't the language here in its abstraction odd? It begins to resemble more a legal document than a poem, perhaps. alters...alteration...remover....remove....The following terms by their repetition of the first terms suggest effects following causes automatically, legalistically, without question - but the poem wants to contradict this: love is not like this - it is not a contract (i.e. dependent on conditions) It is not simply verbal - the flatness of going from alter to alteration, for example. (..alter..is a fairly neutral word for change, ..bend...adds a kind of physicality to the idea - but the pay-off for bends will come in line 10 - that is, the claim that love is not subject to Time and Time's decay - Shakespeare is preparing his effects.
O no...	The emotional tone of the poem alters at this point. It goes from the apparently legalistic, distanced definition of Love to the emotionally insistent - from the negative definitions of the first quatrain to a more positive definition : It is...
...ever-fixed mark..	The defining quality of Love is asserted to be its separation from change i.e. Time. (The important thing now is the assertion - that is, whatever the abstract sound of the poem, it remains essentially an emotional claim.
..tempests..	The common idea of love is as an emotionally volatile state - a tempestuous emotion. But this sonnet wants to define Love in an entirely opposite way: Love is defined by the absence of change.
..star..bark..	The poem, as well as adding in an emotional exclamation - O no! - also begins to add the rhetorical effect of imagery. This second quatrain develops an image of the individual as a ship at sea while Love is the star by which the boat steers. That is, Love is both fixed - for Elizabethans the stars are fixed absolutely, placed by God, a decoration on the floor of Heaven, nothing more fixed - but also a guide for the perplexed - something to control this unfixed life by. The claim is that Love is the one certain thing. And more - if this claim seems unexpected - after all Love is more often defined as a madness at this period and indeed afterwards - it is not this poet's unique experience - it is a guide to every wandering bark - i.e. to every individual, if only they knew it.
Whose worth's unknown..	The poem develops the idea of Love as a star guiding a life/ ship ( and of course at this time there is no other way of guiding a ship by night.) The angle of the star could be measured through instruments - although nothing about the star - in itself - would be known - hence the difference in the poem between worth and height - i.e. seeing the star and saying something about the qualities of the star as it is. Worth - the value of the thing in itself - becomes a transcendent value - not cashable out in ordinary values. So Love has as an experience almost disappeared from ordinary life - to return to the beginning true minds are not commonly met with. Love is something glimpsed at best. (Question: is the poem trying to define what Love is as a human experience, or defining Love in an essentialist way - what real Love really is?) (A good example of how argument proceeds in poetry - poetry is in love with arguing by analogy - that is, it takes an image, and tries to apply its implications)
Love's not Time's fool..	Having gone through negatives (first quatrain), and analogy/imagery (second quatrain) - the poem is now confident enough for a positive definition of Love (although notice that the definitions are still negative - what Love is free from - unlike the rest of human experience) Still, though, the quatrain has a positive, assertive feel: line 9 begins with Love is...and line 11 begins with Love plus an action (albeit negative: alters not.., and both assertions about Love are reinforced by the lines beginning with the stress on the word Love. ..fool.. here means somebody entirely defenceless, vulnerable. Love is defined by its removal from anything physical - since physical attraction - rosy lips and cheeks - is precisely what is subject to Time - i.e. physical beauty decays. Notice how the features contradicted within the first quatrain are here re-emphasized: within his bending sickles' compass (both, the only bending that Love is subject to is through the decay of physical attractiveness - and that is not part of the definition of Love here - and compass suggests measurement, and as line 8 suggests, Love is beyond measurement. Only the inessential - physical being, as opposed to true minds - is subject to Time. What Time allows is reduced to brief hours and weeks - not even years! Love - its essential definition - is being defined in opposition to Time - it bears it out even to the edge of Doom - and Doom here means Judgment Day, that is, the end of Earthly Time (and so beyond any earthly life.) The essential thing about Love is its constancy, its ability to transcend the 'natural' limits of a human life. (Although bears it out doesn't suggest any triumph - rather, a dogged endurance.)
If this be error..	What is the proof of this argument - since the poem is an assertion? The last couplet ties the writer to the assertion - implying both that he is prepared to identify himself with his statements (think of it like a bet - it implies a penalty if he is wrong - and he doesn't think he is), and that other people will be prepared to question his assertion ( not surprising, since the definition of Love here takes it away from most human experience).
I never writ..	The last couplet seeks to finally close the argument. (It is always a question in the Sonnets whether this final resolution is actually a final resolution, or a temporary resting point - a momentary satisfaction - as though it is saying 'good enough for the moment'.) Here, the couplet is staking - perhaps desperately - its claim not on the legalistic argument of quatrain 1, nor on the analogy of quatrain 2, nor on the assertions about Love in quatrain 3, but on personal experience. 'Upon me proved..' implies a court of law in which one is accountable for one's assertions, and where others will certainly seek to hold your opinions against you. 'I never writ..' seems perhaps a simply assertive defence - but cash it out something like: If this definition of Love is false, it might as well be the case that I have not written this (or any other poem) - since if that is the case, this poem is meaningless - , and 'no man ever loved' becomes a more threatening statement: if Love isn't like this, and physical attraction is all there is, with all its limitations, then we might as well give up the word: the only Love worth having is as I have defined it! ( and anything else, whatever it might be, is not Love as people want it to be).

	top text of sonnet	home