
English Wordplay ~ Listen and Enjoy
Sonnet 116

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Acting notes from "Playing Shakespeare" by John Barton: The opening 'Lēt mē nōt 'is broken with two extra stresses. It is as if this sonnet is answering some other speech about how full of alteration love is. Drive the point home by making 'Lōve īs nōt lōve' four stresses in four words. Also four stresses packed together on 'Lōve's nōt Tīme's fōol' give the statement a terrific insistence.

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 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; 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.