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Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare · 1609

Shakespeare's sonnet 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds,' a famous meditation on constant, unchanging love.

Written by Shakespeare, this sonnet is his best-known statement on the constancy of true love.

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Scanned page from the 1609 Quarto of Shakespeare's sonnets, showing Sonnet 116 in old-style black letter type beginning 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds', with page number 119 at top.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, from the 1609 Quarto of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

About this source

What it is

Sonnet 116 is one of William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, first published in 1609. It argues that true love does not change over time or with circumstance.

Why it matters

Often read as a celebration of ideal love, the sonnet shows Shakespeare's mastery of the English sonnet form and his skill at using extended metaphor, comparing love to a fixed star guiding sailors. Scholars have debated whether the poem stands alone as a simple declaration or carries a more complicated meaning within the wider sequence of sonnets, and a later discovery shows it was even adapted into a political verse during the English Civil War, showing how later generations reused Shakespeare's words for their own purposes.

Look closer

  • What images does Shakespeare use to describe love, and why might he have chosen them?
  • Do you think the poem is a simple statement of belief or something more complicated?
  • Why might later readers have reused or rewritten this sonnet for new purposes?

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