Sonnets

William Shakespeare's sonnet was first published in 1609. Its structure and form are a typical example of the Shakespearean sonnet. This sonnet attempts to define love, by telling both what it is and is not. In the first quatrain, the speaker says that love—” the marriage of true minds”—is perfect and unchanging; it does not “admit impediments,” and it does not change when it finds changes in the loved one. Over the course of Sonnet 116, the speaker makes several passionate claims about what love is—and what it isn't. For the speaker (traditionally assumed to be Shakespeare himself, and thus a man), true love doesn't change over time: instead, it goes on with the same intensity forever.