The Evasive Sonnet CXVI (116) Essay - 2568 Words

In my survey of Shakespeares Sonnets, I have found it difficult to sincerely regard any single sonnet as inferior. However, many of the themes could be regarded as rather trite. For example sonnet XCVII main idea is that with my love away I feel incomplete, sonnet XXIX says that only your love remembered makes life bearable, while sonnet XXXVIII makes the beloved the sole inspiration in the poets life. These themes recycled in love songs and Hallmark cards, hardly original now, would hardly have been any newer in Elizabethan England. However the hackneyed themes of these sonnets is in a sense the source of their essence. These emotions, oftentimes difficult to adequately articulate, are shared by all that have loved, been†¦show more content†¦As quickly as the Shakespearean narrator shifts in stance, not only from quatrain to quatrain but from line to line, it becomes quite easy to fall into the hole of misinterpretation. And thus, some popular sonnets are popular be cause of their misinterpretation. Shakespeares speeds ahead in his poetry while readers are left behind, totally oblivious, but still of the mind that they are following close behind. Sonnet CXVI is one of these evasive sonnets. It is indeed elusive and if we are lucky enough to catch hold of it, we may find that we do not in fact possess it entirely. Most interpretations of Sonnet CXVI focus on the constancy of love, which I concede, is indeed an attribute of the sonnet, but is hardly its main point. Wedged between sonnets that begin Those lines that I before have writ do lie (CXV) and Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all (CXVII) one has to reconsider the facile premise that this poem is only about love in its highest, ideal form. In the present paper, I will focus on sonnet CXVI, but not in conjunction to its surrounding sonnets. Instead I will try to read the sonnet without any inclinations to possessing its meaning and let the sonnet speak for itself. But first let us look at the poem. Below is a copy of a sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit