A Russian Formalist's Dream

SONNET 116

 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.

-William Shakespeare

 

The literature written by William Shakespeare was virtually flawless. Take for example the above work, Sonnet 116; within fourteen lines, the poem employs numerous literary devices, including metaphor, personification, and rhythm, and also utilizes a diction and syntax that one could only find within a Shakespearean sonnet. The richness of Shakespeare’s text is both incomparable to many, and superior to most other works of literature.

Within in the first few lines of the sonnet, Shakespeare uses a unique sentence structure in which the indirect object is placed before the direct object. This minute, syntactical element alone is enough to set the work apart from the language the one would here in everyday speech. Also, Shakespeare’s use and placement of varied and pre-determined punctuation gives the sonnet an essence of unfamiliarity. It is details such as this that comprise truly valuable literature. Furthermore, the images that Shakespeare creates using both metaphor and personification are remarkably clear. Shakespeare establishes an oceanic theme in the fifth line of the sonnet, and carries it through to line eight; the metaphor conveys the unfathomable strength of the love about which Shakespeare speaks through nautical language and images of tempests, wandering ships, and guiding stars. Shakespeare also personifies the subject of his poem (true love), by saying that “Love’s not Time’s fool”. By engaging this literary technique, Shakespeare successfully conveys his point; true love does not alter with time, but rather remains strong until the very end regardless of what it must endure. Shakespeare’s literary brilliance is also exemplified through the rhythm and meter of his sonnet. When walking through streets or browsing through a store, one would neither today nor in Elizabethan England, hear a person speaking in iambic pentameter.

Through archaic diction, a wonderfully poetic syntax, and perfectly utilizing various literary devices, William Shakespeare created literature that set, essentially, an unattainable standard of literary excellence.