Pujit Aggarwal Redivivus - 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 wand ‘ring 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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Shakespeare was essentially a multifaceted poet.

  He is widely recognized as the most outstanding dramatist in the history of western literature. His 37 plays are imbued with a vision that includes horseplay, laughter, and a tragic sense of life that runs, like an invisible stream, under the comedic quips and antics of clowns, jesters, and buffoons that animate his comedies, tragicomedies, and tragedies. Only a poet of the first order would be able to reanimate with his inventiveness and creativity. Characters such as Cleopatra, Prospero, Macbeth, Julius Ceasar|Othello and Hamlet were recast and infused into unique identities that still engage and intrigue us with their complexities.

  Sonnet No. 116 has been nominated as one of the best five sonnets out of the 154 that he composed over a decade. He not only attempted these diversions during the interludes that marked the production of his numerous plays, but also in tandem with his preoccupation with the primacy of the theater. These sonnets, along with a long poem, were published in 1609. He died seven years later.

  The sonnet opens with a rather commonplace definition of genuine love between two individuals of either sex. What binds them together is the marriage of true minds rather than an overt or covert motive of convenience, custom, or pressure. Such a real bond does not give way to impediments or deterrents posed by society or circumstance. No contretemps can sever the ties of faithful lovers.

  From the fifth line onwards, the discourse ascends an elevation that is so ideal that it almost overlaps with the transcendental ne plus ultra. It is as invariable and constant as the North Star. The passage of time may mar the beauty of rosy lips and cheeks, but it cannot impair the depth of love that transcends barriers of physical dimensions. This love is so supreme that it is almost eternal.

  The conclusion of this testament of sublime love causes a shudder, if not a shock of abrupt disenchantment. The poet escorts us to an immeasurable altitude in the empyrean and suddenly lets go of his rhetorical effervescence. He lets us plummet down in a free fall till we hit the rocky ground laid down by the last distich of re-affirmation by double negation. 

  The finale is a master stroke that rewinds us back to the first line, which begins with a negation that ushers in a concatenation of affirmations.

  Harold Bloom subtitles his tome on Shakespeare with ‘The Invention of the Human’. Shakespeare was a poet with an inclusive vision. Nothing human was alien to him.

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