Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on Sonnet CXVI: “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds”
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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 3 page paper discusses the themes, imagery and symbolism in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVSoCXVI.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
better indication of the man he is, because they are short, intense expressions of personal feeling. This paper analyzes Sonnet CXVI, which begins "Let me not to the marriage of
true minds..." Discussion Sonnets are difficult to analyze because they are very dense. The format is rigid: Shakespeare wrote the "English sonnet," which is a 14-line form: three quatrains and
a couplet (Barnet). The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg (Barnet 144). Thus, the poet has to find words to express his feelings within a very
precisely defined structure. Because it is so intense, every word is important. In this sonnet, Shakespeare is examining the characteristics of true love, which he says does not change, even
though beauty fades with time and eventually death comes. If this isnt so, he says, then he never wrote, and no man ever fell in love. Or at least this
is one interpretation of it; a critic by the name of Garry Murphy chooses to read it differently, and since we cannot check with the author, his argument is as
valid as any other. Murphy rejects what he calls the "traditional" reading of the poem as calm and serene, and suggests that changing the accent will change the meaning of
the poem. Instead of stressing the syllables like this: Let me NOT to the MAR-riage of TRUE MINDS, he suggests putting the stress on "me": Let ME not to the
MAR-riage of TRUE MINDS (Murphy 40). This immediately suggests that although the speaker is not going to put any impediments between the lovers, someone else is (Murphy). The speaker then
has no intention of bending "with the remover to remove," and hopes that the other person will also refrain from interfering (Murphy). Read in this fashion, the sonnet becomes an
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