In Sonnet 116 ('Let me not to the marriage of true minds'), what is love compared to in order to emphasize its constancy?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: An 'ever-fixed mark' — a guiding star
The speaker defines love as an immovable force that 'looks on tempests and is never shaken.' By comparing it to a star that guides lost ships, Shakespeare asserts that true love is immune to Time's changes and human frailty.
Keep practicing
More Shakespearean Sonnets questions
- Which literary term describes the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate concepts like 'Time' or 'Death' in the sonnets?
- Sonnet 129 ('Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame') is a powerful meditation on what subject?
- The final two sonnets in the 154-poem sequence (153 and 154) are based on which mythological subject?
- What is the function of the final couplet in Sonnet 130 after the poet has spent twelve lines listing his mistress's flaws?
- What is the structural organization of a standard Shakespearean sonnet?
- What is the primary rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet?