Analyze Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare.

CONTENT:

This sonnet is
essentially a definition of love. At first, the author classifies love as something that
never stops. Love does not change with life's changing circumstances or temptations, it
stays the course. Although time will affect the appearance of a lover, that does not
change the quality of love. Shakespeare staked his ability to write on the truthfulness
of this definition:

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If this be error and upon me proved,
I
never writ, nor no man ever
loved.

LITERARY
DEVICE:

When you analyze poetry, you should think about the
speaker, audience, purpose, and style of the poem. This means considering literary
devices. It seems that the audience is vague, and Shakespeare himself is the speaker.
His purpose may be self-exploration and therefore determination of what it means to be
in love. As far as devices he used we see personification
at work for both Love and Time:

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That looks on tempests and is never
shaken;
It is the star to every wandering 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:

Here love was given the
ability to look, and later to have the appearance of "rosy lips and cheeks". This
certainly demonstrates a sign of life which is a further level of
personifcation.

In the 3rd and 4th lines, Shakespeare uses
word play and repetition and
parallel structure with the
words:

Which
alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to
remove:

This affects the
reader because he/she has to think of a word being used as different parts of speech
than it was previously used in the sentence. It feels
clever.

Shakespeare is certainly a master when it comes to
expression.