Analysis of Sonnet 116

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The sonnet 116 written by William Shakespeare and published in 1609 is about love and the main theme is that love endures. The poet is a man who is describing love with a stately tone. Judging by the knowledge the speaker has about love, it is probably safe to assume that he is a mature adult. Throughout the poem, the speaker discusses how true love cannot have alterations, how love is comparable to a guide, and finally how it can withstand time itself. The first stanza in this poem is a quatrain and its rhyme scheme is abab. Shakespeare uses alliteration, assonance, consonance, and repetition to develop this stanza, which, as a whole, states that love does not change. The first line contains an example of alliteration in the words “me,” “marriage,” and “minds.” In this line, he is referring to love as “the marriage of true minds.” He uses the alliteration of the “m” sound to draw attention to his view of love as being a type of marriage. The words “admit” and “impediments” in the second line are examples of both assonance and consonance because of the identical “i” and “m” sounds. These two words placed beside each other help give the poem a flow that makes it much more pleasing to the ear, not only because of the assonance and consonance, but also because the words almost rhyme with each other. The second, third, and fourth lines of this stanza contain repetition. “Love,” “alter,” and “remove” are repeated to put emphasis on the points that he is trying to make. He is saying that if a person is really in love he or she would not have to make changes in their lover to make themself happy, and that love cannot be taken back. The second stanza of this poem is a quatrain with a rhyme scheme of cdcd. This stanza contains assonance, a very clever metaphor, and personification in stating that love is ever-lasting and can be used as a guide in life. The words “star” and
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