Shakespeare's Definition of Love in Sonnet Number
116 and 130
by Lillian Bonar
Essay: Shakespeare's Definition of Love in Sonnet Number 116 and 130
Pages: 11
Rating: 3 stars
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Shakespeare's Definition of Love in Sonnet Number 116 and 130
Sonnet number one hundred sixteen and number one hundred thirty provide a good look at what Shakespeare
himself defines as love. The former describes the ever-enduring nature of true love, while the latter gives an
example of this ideal love through the description of a woman who many call the “Dark Lady”. Through the
combination of these two sonnets Shakespeare provides a consistent picture of what love should be like in order
to “bear it out even to the edge of doom”(116, Ln: 12). To me the tern “maker” used by Sir Philip Sidney to
describe the poets first and foremost duty would refer to the creation process, which produces the end text. The
discourse of the poet is to take an emotion or event they up to that point was purely felt, and make it into flowing
words, which in turn reproduce the initial emotion. The poet is therefore a “maker” of poems as well as emotion.
This emotion would not be present however if the poet were not human experiencing the ups and downs of
everyday life. Therefore I feel that the poet is first and foremost human, and therefore susceptible to human
needs, feelings, and emotions, and secondly a maker.
In Sonnet number one-hundred sixteen Shakespeare deals with the characteristics of a love that is “not time’s
fool”, that true love that will last through all (Ln: 9). This sonnet uses the traditional Shakespearian structure of
three quatrains and a couplet, along with a standard rhyme scheme. The first and third quatrains deal with the
idea that love is “an ever-fixed mark”, something that does not end or change over time (Ln: 5). Shakespeare
illustrates this characteristic of constancy through images of love resisting movemen...
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