critical appreciation of the poem sonnet 116 _Shakespeare

Shakespeare has written 154 sonnets and they all deal with the theme of love, time, beauty, friendship and mortality. Sonnet 116 is one of the most widely-read poems among them. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man with whom the speaker of the poem is emotionally bound. The rest of the sonnets are addressed to ‘the dark lady’. Love is the most prominent theme of sonnet 116. The poet glorifies the meaning of true love which can surpass all the obstacles and thus remains unchanged even with the passage of time. The poet begins this sonnet with a reference to the Christian marriage service and its accompanying ceremonies. He talks of the union of true minds. 

The poet makes a distinction between true love and unfaithful love. According to him, love is not love which alters under changed circumstances. True love never changes even when one of the lovers becomes unfaithful to the other. In the next quatrain Shakespeare makes use of two metaphors to bring out the permanence of true love. First, the poet says that love is an ever-fixed mark, a light house that looks on tempests but is never shaken. Next he says that love is the pole star which guides every wandering ship in the ocean. Its value is unknown though its height be calculated. In the third quatrain, the poet brings out the ravages of time. Time is personified as a reaper carrying a sickle with which he cuts man’s life, looks and possessions. 

Time can destroy the rosy lips and cheeks but true love does not depend on physical beauty. True love will remain unchanged even with the passage of time. It will remain the same till the end of the world. It is constant and permanent and nothing can change it. The last two lines reaffirm the poet’s statement that true love is constant and permanent. If this statement is proved wrong by any one, then the poet says that he had never written any poems and no man ever experienced true love.