Love Sonnet 116

The Bible tells us that "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Love endures all things. Sonnet 116 written by William Shakespeare is about love in its most ideal form. It is praising the glories of lovers who have come to each other freely, and enter into a relationship based on trust and understanding. True love is hard to come by, and once stumbled upon, cannot be dismissed. In the mind of William Shakespeare, true love is the intense bond of two souls who love each other unconditionally, no matter the physical appearance, distance between them, or any other obstacle that may serve to separate the two.

When the poem begins the idea of marriage is quickly seen within the first line. Shakespeare wants people to realize that if two people really love each other and once they are bonded through marriage, they are now together forever even through the hard times. Shakespeare says that there is nothing that can make this love weaken or be broken. He wants us to know that love, as strong of a love he is referring to, will last through all obstacles.

Shakespeare says in lines 3 and 4, "Which alters when it alteration finds, / or bends with the remover to remove." When talking about this Shakespeare is explaining his view of the strength of the love shared between two people that are joined in marriage. Other poets before and during Shakespeare's time would write and glorify things about love that would eventually fade.