Sonnet 116 is one of the most famous, but some scholars have argued the theme has been misunderstood. Hilton Landry believes the appreciation of 116 as a celebration of true love is mistaken [4], in part because its context in the sequence of adjacent sonnets is not properly considered. Landry acknowledges the sonnet “has the grandeur of generality or a “universal significance,” but cautions that “however timeless and universal its implications may be, we must never forget that Sonnet 116 has a restricted or particular range of meaning simply because it does not stand alone.” [5] Carol Thomas Neely writes that, “Sonnet 116 is part of a sequence which is separate from all the other sonnets of Shakespeare because of their sense of detachment. They aren’t about the action of love and the object of that love is removed in this sequence which consists of Sonnets 94, 116, and 129” [6] This group of three sonnets doesn’t fit the mold of the rest of Shakespeare’s sonnets, therefore. They defy the typical concept and give a different perspective of what love is and how it is portrayed or experienced. “Though 116 resolves no issues, the poet in this part of the sequence acknowledges and accepts the fallibility of his love more fully than he could acknowledge that of the young man’s earlier” [7] Other critics of Sonnet 116 [8] have argued that one cannot rely on the context of the sonnet to understand its tone. They argue “there is no indisputably authoritative sequence to them, we cannot make use of context as positive evidence for one kind of tone or another.” [9] Shakespeare doesn’t attempt to come to any significant conclusion within this particular sonnet because no resolution is needed.
Quatrain 1
The sonnet begins with the poet's apparent acknowledgment of the compelling quality of the emotional union of "true minds". As Helen Vendler has observed, “This famous almost ‘impersonal’ sonnet on the marriage of true minds has usually been read as a definition of true...