Shakespearan Sonnets: Ideal Love Songs

When looking at our reading assignment for this week, I was extremely pleased to see that we would be reading Shakespearean sonnets. Over winter session, I went abroad to London on the English/Theatre program. A majority of the course focused on Shakespeare's plays and I was fortunate enough to see both King Lear and Hamlet performed at various London theatres. One of my assignments was to memorize a sonnet and analyze each and every line of it so I could truly understand its meaning and appreciate every word. At first, I found this assignment to be tedious more than anything else, but soon realized how much more the sonnet spoke to me once I had a chance to digest all of it. This previous assignment definitely helped when it came time to read all of the sonnets for this week. I was able to recall some of the sonnets my classmates had memorized, along with my own sonnet, and remembered some of the close reading I had done which helped me better understand Shakespeare and his work.
The one aspect of Shakespeare's sonnets that immediately captures my attention is the raw emotion that is expressed. Unlike any other author I have been exposed to, Shakespeare seems to write exactly how he feels about a loved one in the purest and most elquoent way possible. The love sonnets that he writes would surely have any girl fall to her knees and the sonnets where he is asking for forgiveness would be difficult to refuse. They are the ideal love songs.
Sonnet 116 caught my attention while going through the first pass of the reading. During my second pass, I spent extra time on this sonnet since the first couple of lines, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments; love is not love which alters when it alteration finds," caught my attention. This sonnet explains, based on the narrator's point of view, what love is and what love is not. Those first several lines talk about how love is contant and never changes. Regardless of what happens between the couple or them as individual people, the love that the narrator feels for the other will never change. Lines 9-10, "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come," explains that love is not a time limit feeling, but will continue on forever. Even though rosy lips and cheeks may fade, the love that the narrator has for the other will remain regardless of the outer appearances. The couplet, "If there be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved," challenges the reader. The narrator is so confident of what he says and how he feels that he challenges the reader to prove him wrong. The narrator knows that true love is what he speaks of in this particular sonnet and that he cannot be proven wrong otherwise.
Many of the other sonnets that Shakespeare wrote end in much of the same way. Personally, it leaves me thinking and wondering if anyone would ever challenge the narrator of the feelings that they feel. While reading thru all of the sonnets I felt as though I was reading thru the stages of someone's rollercoaster of emotions. Each sonnet speaks of a different feeling so very strongly it is hard not to get sucked in and picture yourself being the person that is saying the very words on the page.