“Poets, as a class, are business men. Shakespeare describes the poet’s eye as rolling in fine frenzy, from heaven to earth, and giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, but in practice, you will find that one corner of that eye is generally glued on the royalty returns.”~P.G. Wodehouse

You knew Shakespeare was coming up soon. This sonnet, first published in 1609, was the most popular Shakespearean sonnet to make the list, although certainly not the only one.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, and the poems were most likely composed over a period of several years in the late 1500’s. The first 126 sonnets in sequence, which was first published in 1609, are supposedly addressed to a young man, for whom the author has a thing. I’m not convinced.

Sonnets 1-126 seem to be addressed to an unnamed male friend, younger than Shakespeare. The intensity of feeling and the language imply a sexual love, but that is to impose our modern perceptions of sexuality on the poems. Even the most masculine of men were not afraid to express a view of their feelings for other men and admiration of their beauty, unlike the fear modern men have of being thought to be homosexual if they did that. Speculation about Shakespeare’s sexuality is a red herring. In those sonnets, 1-126, we see a growing friendship with the young man and the development of an intensity of feeling. In sonnets 1-17 Shakespeare seems concerned with the desire to urge the young man to marry and reproduce. Then, as the friendship develops and the poet comes to love the young man intensely, we see feelings of grief caused by the poet’s separation from him. They live in different worlds: the young man is a nobleman and that, in itself, is cause for a certain kind of separation. Moreover, the young man is idle and wanton, whereas Shakespeare is a hard-working actor, writer and businessman, and that, too, is a major difference in lifestyle and another level of separation. However, these sonnets reveal a deep love for the young man, an admiration of his exceptional physical beauty, and, perhaps, the payment of dues to a benefactor. ~No Sweat Shakespeare

Whatever. The sonnet itself is a paean to the immutability of Love, and as such, it has been claimed by lovers everywhere as means of expressing undying love to the beloved.

And here’s a heart-rending clip from the movie Sense and Sensibility in which Marianne quotes The Bard’s love sonnet to express her wild sensibility and love for WIlloughby:

Recent blog mentions:
A Circle of Quiet: “I know this is a love sonnet, usually saved for romantic love, but my heart is filled with love for my dear mother today. . . . My mother has been the model of loyalty and faithful love, and it is an honor to be with her in this season of life. Right to the edge of doom, Mama.”
Donna at Quiet Life: We watched Have you heard about the Morgans? again this weekend. This sonnet is recited in a very sweet scene in the movie.
Alyssa at Many Small Things: “I am thankful for Shakespeare because he was just such a darn good writer who provided us with entertaining and fascinating plays and sonnets which are still a joy to read several centuries later.”