Shakespeare: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
The Beat of Stimulating Hearts It can be said that love, in all aspects, has a broad yet distinct ability to conquer the lives of those who are fortunate enough to encounter such fulfillment. There are individuals who will spend an entire lifetime searching for the correct and adequate meaning to a single-syllable word with nothing more than four simplistic letters to comprise its body. Affection, fondness, adoration, devotion and ardor are all emotions that symbolize and thrive in the presence of love. William Shakespeare’s, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds,” uses symbolism to depict his own portrayal of love by using a range of examples such as death, the constellations, vicious weather, lost vessels at sea, and time, by doing this, he gives the term love an incalculable characterization. In the first quatrain, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments” (1), Shakespeare interprets love as the ultimate form of partnership amongst two individuals. He achieves this by insinuating that the symbol of marriage is the highest form of commitment that is achieved amongst believers of true, unfaltering love. The preceding quote sets the tone for the overall emphasis of this particular poem. For instance, in the second, third, and fourth lines of the first quatrain, Shakespeare claims that love is forever, never altering no matter what circumstances it finds itself in. This introduces a depiction of emotionally bending love in order to permanently remove it from existence. According to Shakespeare, love should be able to withstand the removal attempts without easily conforming to its remover.
The symbolism of the second quatrain delves into the realm of love’s capability of becoming borderless and infinitum. An example of this would be, “Oh, 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” (5). The fixed mark that
The symbolism of the second quatrain delves into the realm of love’s capability of becoming borderless and infinitum. An example of this would be, “Oh, 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” (5). The fixed mark that