Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 Is Not What It Seems
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SOURCES
Roessner, Jane. “The Coherence and the Context of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 81, no. 3, 1982, pp. 331-46, www.jstor.org/s....
Neely, Carol Thomas. “Detachment and Engagement in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: 94, 116, and 129.” PMLA, vol. 92, no. 1, 1977, pp. 83-95, doi.org/10.230....
Landry, Hilton, "The Marriage Of True Minds: Truth and Error in Sonnet 116"
www.proquest.c...
Marotti, Arthur F. “‘Love Is Not Love’: Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences and the Social Order.” ELH, vol. 49, no. 2, 1982, pp. 396-428, doi.org/10.230....
MUSIC (via Epidemic Sound)
Erasmus Talbot, "The Roundabout"
Philip Ayers, "Pause For Concern"
Dust Follows, "Swan"
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4:50 Are you okay, friend? Seems weird for you to place that like that. Hope you are doing well.
The sonnet hits me as if the author is trying to convince himself that the love he has for a long dead person is still the same as it was in life.
Hi Nerdwriter. Big big big fan of you're channel. And thank you so much for introducing me to The Sandman. Those stories are something else. Something mystic, awe-inspiring and other worldly.
Can you please do some more Sandman videos? And a video on Terry Pratchett's Discworld please? That's if you're familiar with Discworld of course.
Interesting interpretation. I think it’s important to remember that “true” meant “faithful” and “admit” meant “let in” in Shakespeare’s time. Shakespeare was basically saying love is not love if it isn’t faithful. In other words, you should love your beloved even their appearance changes because of Time. Losing your looks could be an impediment to love, but you shouldn’t let it be. If love doesn’t need to be faithful love to be love, then in Shakespeare’s opinion what (unfaithful) people do isn’t love nor has Shakespeare written a single meaningful sonnet about love because faithful love is the only love he espouses. I don’t think Shakespeare would have agreed with your idea of finding ephemeral things beautiful. In many other sonnets, he urges beautiful people to have children so their beauty won’t pass away. Great video all the same. Love the stuff you do about paintings.
WOW, SHOCKED. I totally woke up today thinking $hake$pear’$ $onnet 116 is definitely what i think seems. This is earth shattering good sir… thanks and good job but shit title
"And we charish the most the things we can lose."
So beautifully written. So many lovers forget about it and stop charishing each other as much as when they are in love the first time.
Your point here is why this sonnet's use in Sense & Sensibility is so perfect. Willoughby dumps Marianne for financial security. Their relationship isn't an ever fixed mark. And it's used so beautifully as Marianne grieves what can't be.
Also beautiful when she recites it as she’s staring at his estate from the hilltop - she’s the “speaker in the void” crying out to the distance because this poem represented to her what she had believed love to be, what she wanted love to be, and is mourning the loss of the meaning of the poem as much as him. I love that movie!!
I that it stands to condemn Willoughby, but more than that, to honor Brandon, to encompass what he was capable of both with the woman he lost and the woman whose love he gained. She and Willoughby married other people, but she married someone who could make her happy because he embodied the values in the poem. Willoughby, in betraying the thing he claimed to embrace, lost everything but the one thing he gained. He gave all that up for money.
@@BeeWhistler Right!! And then I guess it stands up to interpretation whether he embodies the values from the sonnet because he feels true love where Willoughby only fancied that he did (meaning in that case the writer had not been in error about love), or whether both had genuinely loved Marianne (and Eliza before her in Colonel Brandon’s case) and the poem errs because love itself cannot stand resolute and unchanged in the face of tragedy or death if one does not have the character to value love in that way. If that makes sense :) but either way, Colonel Brandon is the best!
@@HayleighPaige I think Sense and Sensibility highlights the unshakable nature of love which a strait forward and positive interpretation of the sonnet supports. Brandon is the perfect example. Steady and sacrificial, waiting patiently. I'm not a Shakespeare scholar but Nerdwriter's take on the sonnet seems revisionist.
@@hettinga359 If we interpret the sonnet in earnest, there's zero reason for Shakespeare to mention "proof" or "errors". It'd be a Chekhov's gun. Are you really gonna argue that he stuffed the the last two lines (the most salient position in the sonnet) with meaningless filler?
Adore waking up, turning on the tv and finding this 10 seconds into its submission, sincerely appreciate all the work you do
It always amazes me how you're able to compress an English Literature lecture into less than eight minutes. Thank you.
- Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown/Pimisi
Has to be done. Traditional style lectures posted on RUclips come across very badly. 🤨
I had a phase in high school where I tried to memorize as many sonnets as possible - this was my first memorized and one of the few I still remember over a decade later, it’s a weird thing now that I write it in on the last page of every notebook or notepad I own. Anyway, great video!! :))
That's just ... Wow! 🙂 🤗
What other sonnets are worth memorizing?
I think it is a beautiful intention to fill your memory with sonnets. I, for example, at the back of my "virtual" notebook 📓 have the baby chimp that puts his finger in his ass and smells it, followed by a hilarious fall back... #samesiesies
@@junedanieltamor9071 definitely sonnet 18 by shakespeare!!
@@junedanieltamor9071 agreed, 18 is classic, and so is 73! I also enjoy 130 because of its cheeky subversion of the trope of writing about the beauty of one’s love (which Shakespeare did plenty haha). And I also really like 128 :)
I have always liked seeing "admit" as "introduce" as in a ticket for admission. He is not inventing the impediment...
The "remover to remove" is describing a drawing compass, btw. And the star to every wandering bark... which makes you think of a sextant. Both tools are also ways to measure degrees.
I see the "Admit" statement as a sarcastic call out. He's saying-- "Other than those with a perfect marriage, don't let me knock down your white picket fence image, and *admit that you have faults" ----- "Admit, is a very precise word to use there.... Because from then on, he's referring to One persons "True love" never giving up: even when another "has alteration".. right "never bends to the remover" -- the remover of love; or someone who is giving up or changing direction (hints the compass reference). "A fixed mark" -- "never shaken in the wind storm" -- "bears it out till the edge of doom" ...... All of these things are talking about not giving up, or that real love never lets go-- even when it's one sided.
@@calholli I'd say it is most likely not sarcastic. The sonnet is a consolation for two persons who might have been in love but discovered an impediment.
I don't understand the expression "that bends with the remover to remove". Does it mean "that bends when the remover is removed"? Does it mean "that bends along with the remover in order to remove... something"?
Yes, I've interpreted it as a pseudo-legal statement. "I shall not *admit evidence* before this mock-court, as we are about to enter a legal contract - but also, I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek, because clearly we're not ACTUALLY in a court, and so you all understand that I'm being silly and not literally entering (or refusing to enter) evidence".
As someone who has not had much exposure or interest in art interpretation I really appreciate this clip. It makes me feel inspired to go explore some poems or paintings as if they are a little treasure trove of hidden secrets and meanings to be unearthed. I appreciate your work and sharing your thoughts!
I wouldn't say there's something sinister about it. He merely points out that there's a big difference between true love and superficial infatuation.
He makes it blatantly clear how big the difference really is with some extreme examples. That's how you'll be able to unmistakably tell the difference.
Thank you for making this point. I am very much with you on this one. I honestly think it's breath-taking arrogance to tell us all that we have got it 'wrong'. It COULD mean what he says it means. It COULD be what it looks like - a meditation on love. Or it could be both.
I'm with Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
But actually I find all the points in this staggeringly unconvincing.
Thank you for making this point. I am very much with you on this one. I honestly think it's breath-taking arrogance to tell us all that we have got it 'wrong'. It COULD mean what he says it means. It COULD be what it looks like - a meditation on love. Or it could be both.
I'm with Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
But actually I find all the points in this staggeringly unconvincing.
Understanding and proving any work as "Not What It Seems" is the coolest thing for anyone studying the arts. Hats off.
"it's his most famous sonnet"
uhh "shall i compare thee to a summer's day" is literally the only sonnet that 99% of english speakers have ever heard
Yeah, I chortled at that point too. Ridiculousness.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” is probably more famous as well
"no, a summer's day is not a bitch"
Bro everyone learns Sonnet 116 at school in the UK
@@tomr6712 I went to school in the UK and din't learn it. And even if that were true, Sonnet 18 is so prevalent in culture that you barely even have to learn it. You at least know the first two lines word for word just from cultural osmosis
The beauty of poetry is the various interpretations. The reader does not necessarily need to see something the way the writer did. Language is ambiguous because meaning is personal. We have no control over how others understand us
fancy running into you again ...
hey, you said it so. language is ambiguous because meaning is personal. and on this premise i was about to comment on this video.
I agree wholeheartedly. Let us not hold too tightly to our personal interpretations. The beauty of poetry is hearing and considering fully everyone's interpretations. To see a new piece in a new way because you were open to listening is one of poetry and literature's greatest pleasures.
Beauty of any art, I believe. Beauty in the eye of the beholder they say.
I always wonder to what degree one might consider it bravery to confront the impermanence of everything, or differently said, to what degree its naive not to. I used to ponder about the impermanence of everything, but the paradox is that such thought is as futile as it's implications. I, for once, have decided to play along with whatever we might call life, love, free will, feelings or thought - as not doing so provides me with nothing but a sense of unease and meaninglessness. A fictional story can be as meaningful to you as a real one, and as we are clearly unable to distinguish the two for what's considered 'living', I have decided to not care but embrace. That works astonishingly well, despite the fact that it's self-deceptive on some level.
I read this poem as not a man searching or attempting to convince himself that true love is real, but about the abstract, perfect concept of love. Specifically the second quatrain; Shakespeare uses all of these distant objects or immovable concepts to represent love as an ideal that is used by man, but never touched nor obtained in practice. You mention both the references to the mark and the star. Both are important navigation assets to sailors; they quite literally guide men across oceans and seas without ever being able to own either. This is a clever description of the dichotomy of true love; the sonnet states that true love as an ideal is real, but between two people is unfeasible.
My point is, your video essays are always enjoyable and this one was both excellent and thought provoking. Now hurry up and get that book to my house ;-).
The first thing that comes to mind is that I can't remember Shakespeare ever using 'admit' to mean 'acknowledge' but usually 'let in'.
Yup 👍🏻
Makes more sense in context too
Yes, thank you.
"Bending sickles" is not a reference to death, as death wields a scythe. Rather, sickles are held by Chronos, the greko/roman god of time.
Yes and they mention Time earlier in that line. Although it seems like death and time are often correlated and have similar symbols.
Sorry the sickle is a very set metaphor in English Lit, it can only mean death
Same meaning practically
Nerdwriter is the only channel where I like the newly released videos out of support before I even watch it
this and historia civilis :)
It is so simple... here the speaker permeates his love for electric vehicles. The soul behind this sonnet is charging his chariot by trailing his behind on his lover's carpet, generating static electricity.
Sublime
🤣🤣
So he needs to insert his dongle to get the juices flowing.. I get that
I have one point of contention. I think he's defining a "true" love. A love that is eternal and everlasting, despite changes or even death. _However_ , if the love that he writes about or the love that people proclaim _isn't_ like this, then it's not really love, in that love doesn't exist on our plane of existence. It's almost like he's saying that we _need another word_ for this temporally-restricted love, since the love we all claim doesn't match what is *"truly love"* .
> _If this be error and upon me prov'd,_
> _I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd._
The fact that the couplet consists of a conditional is significant. Because one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens. E.g. the conditional "if it rained -> then the ground is wet" can resolve to "it rained; => therefore the ground is wet" (modus ponens). But it can also resolve to "the ground is not wet; => therefore it has not rained" (modus tollens).
From my perspective, the couplet (which is an unresolved conditional) deliberately invites the audience to challenge their conception of love. The challenge and the irony is the point. And since the couplet is the most unique stanza and has the final say of the sonnet, I imagine that the conditional is what Shakespeare wanted to emphasize. Had Shakespeare wanted to emphasize the fact that true love is somehow distinct from (and better than) secular love, I think the couplet would have straightforwardly contrasted the two types of love. E.g. maybe something to the effect of "as above; so below // yet cleaved by the firmament" or "the fates stretch the finite to the infinite // until it snaps". Or if the poem were aspirational, he could have continued on the star & ship theme. E.g. "the distance is great, // yet we sail to the edge". But instead, the couplet talks about "errors" and "proof", and the "writing" of the poem itself, as if to call doubt on its own thesis.
“Beauty belongs to what is impertinent…” wow. That line has so many applications. Sunsets, youth, rainbows, the list of fleeting beauty is limitless.
And everything is fleeting, which means everything is beautiful.
I don't really agree with your interpretation (and doubt that Sonnet 116 is the Bard's most famous), but I appreciate the idea of this video, which in any case will be a delight to English teachers everywhere.
Agreed. Sonnet 18 is probably top thereas the most famous, and I’d argue 130 is probably a contender for second place.
@@freindlybookworm I have definitely heard both of those poems many times and have literally never heard a singlen line of 118 before watching this video
When Nerdwriter1 posts a video, we all listen. Simple as that.
A moment of genuine happiness, a break from the real world.
I'm a simple man, a see a Nerdwriter's video, I watch it.
Or we roll our eyes at how pretentious it is.
For those under true love its less of a mystery. He understands there's not a chance hes wrong and the entire poem gets flipped on its head. Liked the video.
And yet many fall out of "true love" :)
I always tell myself to remember that when Bill Shakespeare uses "true" he tends to use it the way we now use "faithful"--in the same sense as the famous line, "to thine own self be true."
We now use "true love"like a compound word with no smaller atom of meaning when, in fact, it has become tenuously connected to its original sense of committed love and used as a truism.
We now use "true love"like a compound word with no smaller atom of meaning when, in fact, it has become tenuously connected to its original sense of committed love and used as a truism.
If you go to the Shakespeare online concordance, you'll see that the word 'admit' is not a rare one for Shakespeare. There are two instances in 'Hamlet':
"... that she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens. "
"That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no
discourse to your beauty."
Both are, of course, references to Ophelia.
In the first, the clear meaning is 'to be allowed in', and in the second, it's a metaphorical 'admit', meaning that beauty should not be allowed to compromise her honesty by having any kind of discourse with it.
This is the 'admit' we have here, surely. That the writer will not permit the idea of the marriage of true minds to be challenged by cynics who suggest impediments. The writer will simply not entertain the idea. Perhaps we're allowed to infer that the writer is saying that any such challenge would, in his view, be absurd.
This kind of microscopic text-hunting reminds me of Shakespeare deniers, desperately scanning words for some obscure reference to de Vere, or Henry Neville, or old Uncle Tom Cobley. So anxious to demonstrate how smart you are that you insist that when the writer says black he means white. Sometimes ... honestly ... even poets say what they mean. Sometimes a cigar is ... just a cigar.
Thank you, I was hunting for this comment. The ill-guided overanalysis of the word choice yet misunderstanding of many of the words as Shakespeare would have used them (also "doom" most likely would have meant "fate" or "judgement" to Shakespeare, not "death" or "apocalypse" as we understand it today) is one of the many flaws in this video.
@@Mompellion Thanks so much for taking the trouble to reply. I think you're right. And I think it's very arrogant to assume that there is one interpretation of a poem, and it is yours, and everyone else is wrong.
I know this is the fashionable interpretation. I heard literati saying this only last week on 'In Our time' on BBC Radio 4 (it's on I player. Brilliant. Emma Smith, I think.) The thing is ... I just don't buy it. I don't see the negativity of love being a literal guiding star. I don't see the negativity of saying that you refuse to admit that there can be no marriage between two minds. I don't see a contradiction in saying that love survives to the edge of doom. Life was very harsh in those days. Doom hung around on street corners in the form of plague, government narks, footpads ... The idea that love will take you right up to the moment of excruciating death is not negative. I think that one day this spoil-sport interpretation of the sonnet will be trashed and we can all just enjoy it again.
When Shakespeare WANTS to be cynical about love, he makes it VERY clear. Look at Sonnet 138 ("Therefore I lie with her and she with me/And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.")
Every LINE of 138 makes it very clear that he and his mistress have a relationship based on falsehood. I don't see this cynicism in 116. It certainly expresses the perils of a dangerous and sometimes unpleasant world, but there is very much a feeling of two people battling this unpleasantness together.
Shakespeare experts are sometimes just too fancy-schmanzy smart for their own good, and want to show how dumb the rest of us are. Damn you all! Hope there's no star in sight when you get lost at sea, and when you get to the edge of doom, your lover tells you you're a pain in the ass. So there!
Modernism Interpretation: “I’ve experienced inner peace within a tumultuous, dreary life; this is what love is and how one knows whether to trust in it.”
Postmodernism: Shakespeare’s “love sonnet” is, really, a thinly-veiled meditation on the existential despair that is your life!!! The impending heat-death of the universe is nigh-forever!
Yes! I love nerdwriter but this interpretation seems out of step with Shakespeare's idealistic view of love. There are obvious literary links to a couple of biblical passages which have a similar high view of love. Song of Solomon 8:6-7 speaks of love as a flame which floods cannot quench and 1 Corinthians 15 (commonly read at weddings) says that it "bears all things" and "never fails." People may fail to live up to that ideal but it doesn't change the nature or definition of love. The use of negative language throughout the sonnet isn't meant to subvert the claims being made. It strengthens them by showing what love is able to overcome.
2:44. Another interesting aspect of the phrase “Love is not love” is how a contrast of repetition is also used in the next two lines. “Alters” is contrasted with “alteration” and “remover” with “remove.” (A figure of rhetoric technically called polyptoton, when a word is repeated in a different form.) These parallel structures would seem to reinforce and emphasize the original contrast.
GCSE lit my g
"We cherish the most what we might lose"
So sad, yet so true.
Re: the Remarkable
It’s fantastic! I’ve been using it for a year and a half and not regretting the cost either.
Also, the Remarkable has a separate marking pencil which is great for working with pdfs, because it auto-detects the text. So no need for trembly underlining.
In the words of Andre 3000
"If they saying nothing is forever, then what makes love the exception"
I feel like (in America at least) "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" and "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" are far more popular than 116. But what a great video, and great topic!
Amazing analysis. I remember studying this sonnet at university, amoung a bunch of others.
Though I would argue that Sonnet 18 is a lot more iconic than this. But it is definitely one of the most recognisable.
This video fits superbly in the entire narrative of the sonnet as well, since it captures the change of love Shakespeare feels for the Fairy Youth and Dark Lady
I thought I knew my Shakespeare pretty well, but all my life I've always thought sonnet 18 was the most famous in that most people I've known can at least recite the first line ("Shall I compare thee to a summers' day?"). By what metric are we measuring fame here? Honest question.
real gs can spit this one out on the regs geez
@@tomr6712 It seems my whole life has been a farce. I know...
I'm sorry, but "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" is a far more famous of his sonnets.
And so much more annoying
apology accepted
I like this idea that's love is not a constant and permanent thing written somewhere in a magical all-knowing book, but it's a product of a relationship between people. That's something that needs to be made and create via our acts for the loved ones. Love's purely human.
Where was this when I was writing my iGCSEs. Have to say this makes me appreciate something I never cared about and that's all thanks to you, the Shakespeare of video essays.
What does that acronym stand for, and in what context? I'm not up on this.
Love it. Great analysis. Liked especially the comments about the abstract nature of this odd sonnet. NB: it's the marriage of "true minds" not "true bodies" or even "true hearts". Why is that? Something of the abstract when we talk about lovers being in love through the mind rather than through rosy lips and cheeks, eyes and hands, breast and nape.
When Shakespeare finished writing Sonnet 116 he was heard to remark, “Thank f*** for that. Only 38 to go”
IMO the point is that if you really love someone, then you always will...no matter how disastrous things turn out.
You had good observations! I'd like to add mine. Firstly, it reminds me of the ending of The Great Gatsby.
1st Quatrain: I think the speaker will not meddle with (and perhaps protect) a romantic couple whose minds are concerned with truth. "Love is not love" is simply an oxymoron meant to allude of the depth of Love. Love does not alter; Love does not bend for anything or anyone.
2nd Quatrain: Love as an ever-fixed *mark.* I take that to mean Love is a _state of being_ as much as a destination for the wand'ring barks; it's an effervescent star, a navigational guide, for everyone and those whose path/purpose is unknown, those w meandering souls. You, the reader, the wanderer, must find the state of being in love and know that likewise as your destination---a further trajectory of the state of being in love; no matter the tempests or risks.
3rd Quatrain: Love is timeless. Although it hurts the rosy lips and cheeks of the inexperienced youth, often cut by the sickle of First Loves, it is ageless, it can't be measured or quantified by time. Love is as potent in the first hours as it is years later---To the edge of doom (a Love that spawns these types of headlines: An 11-year-old boy fell into an Italian volcanic crater. His parents also died trying to save him.)
I think the couplet simply means that he really believes in _his_ description of Love to be correct: i.e., he believes that Love is everlasting. If it is not then "no man [has] ever lov'd"; if love shakes, alters, or bends then "[he] never writ".
--if you like this, consider following me on tt, @xxxslinky
I would recommend the book The Sacred Art of Shakespeare. I think it would add a dimension that's missing from the video entirely.
Amazing video as always, but i thought the conclusion fell a little short this time. I agree that the antagonisms in love are real, in the sense that it cannot be mediated completely. Yet by giving an answer as neutral knowledge about the 'true' nature of love, you seem to have reduced this antagonism to just one of many which can be mediated. The paradoxical nature seems to have been lost. I think the more radical solution will be letting the lover take full subjective responsibility for his decisions. Something of the sort, "I am going to do such and such for no other reason than that I have decided to love this object! You can ask whatever you like! I have no good answer!"
Here instead of the lover's impotence being hidden behind an objective knowledge, the impotence becomes the very basis of the lover's power. By taking full subjective responsibility and asserting fidelity to something which has no objective basis, the lover, in true enlightenment fashion (recall Kant's maxim) not only does his duty but assumes full responsibility for doing it.
Shakespeare uses this idea in Hamlet as well. When he gets no answer from his mother, hamlet has to take full responsibility for his decision to kill his uncle. He can no longer look for an objective answer.
You're writing as if you believe the last two lines of the sonnet implicitly.
But it is self-evident (or at least demonstrable) that there is love which is true yet inconstant. Positing otherwise is, to me, an over-extension of the latitude of meaning granted to poets.
One must either believe Shakespeare insensible of the crudest nuances of love or acknowledge that the poem is employing its own fallacy as a literary device--which, from an author known for borderline self-indulgent wordplay, seems rather more likely.
1:06 i reckon sonnet 18 is more famous than 116, because the pay person definitely knows the line ‘shall i compare thee to a summers day’
Always a good day when I get a Nerdwriter upload notification
1:39 true love
2:34 cannot keep souls that have an understanding from being separated
4:28 whatever is true, whatever is noble, etc
4:48 death is inevitable
Love bears all things love never fails
6:57 yes
You pointed out the Love is not love line as being paradoxical but it's actually not. Its capital L Love being compared to lower case l love. The use of capitals on concepts like Love means it is being used in the meta sense. Which is what the whole poem is about true eternal Love vs temporal earthly love.
Its used in philosophy alot.
This is one of THE best glosses on a sonnet I have ever seen. Fantastic! Thank you so much for this marvelous tool for teaching sonnets.
no way this is his most famous sonnet... "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
"It's his most famous sonnet." Sonnet 18 enters the chat...
Great video. Loved the breakdown. But I'd argue that Sonnet 18 is Shakespeare's most famous.
Sadly, yes. And 18 is so annoying.
its definitely 18
Quatrain 2, for WS a "mark" is often used in allusions or metaphors involving archery
Really liked the ocean in the background finally being illuminated in conjunction with the conclusion 👍🏼
One more point. The enjambment after 'love is not love'...
Suppose there were no line break. If the sentence were to be continuous, it would read:
"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds."
This would alter the meaning. We now have a phrase 'love which alters' which suggests that there is a particular type of love which is inclined to alter.
The meaning is now blurred. Whereas with a line break, it is obvious to the reader that the paradoxical 'love is not love' is about to be qualified in the course of the following line.
And here's another thing. COMMAS are very important. (The punctuation seems to be Shakespeare's choice*)
He has chosen NOT to put a comma at the end of the line. This is surely an important indicator to the reader that the thought begun in the second line is to be completed in the third. The reader is NOT invited to see the statement 'love is not love' in isolation.
*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_116 for facsimile of original
Evan's work is like wine, the more time passes, the more cultured and refined it gets, the better it's tastefulness
We want more, i am ready to beg you for this, plz
This poem is tricky because Shakespeare leads us to think of romantic love, and we are lead to think this by the nature of a sonnet, when in fact he is speaking of universal love. He doesn't want to admit impediments to romantic love--love traditional like marriage, but he believes most fully in the love for humanity as a whole. So much more than two minds, the love that pervades when we are closest to doom, that keeps us hopeful, that is inherent in every one of us rather than that across lovers or family. It is that every person can love in this capacity that Shakespeare is confident without error.
It’s my birthday and I get to watch a new Nerdwriter video. I needed this :)
Astonishingly, the makers of this video have blocked me (on my other channels) for challenging their orthodoxy.
I am staggered. They are not prepared to hear counter-arguments in a discussion about the meaning of a POEM?
I would love an explanation, but I suspect that they'll just block me on this channel as well.
Its just a circular perception of the collective emotion in divinty described quite beautifully honestly, the contrasting images in Taoism is what creates Art itself.
Please, more poetry videos.
Like many great poems it is multi layered, as you develop as a human being you reach deeper layers and this is a beautiful aspect of great art
The sonnet feels like inner thoughts or a monologue of someone experiencing love or break up
He added something in this beautiful video that freaked the hell out of me for a second.
On 6:25 when you colour the word admit when you said it, nice touch
The sickle is not a reference to Death but to Kronos, Greek god of time. Kronos used a sickle to kill his father Ouranos and usurp his place as the supreme being. What Death uses is a scythe, not a sickle. Though the personification of Death does take a lot of inspiration from Saturnus (AKA Father Time), the Roman version of Kronos , who is often depicted with a scythe.
The best video essayist on RUclips.
We live for this.
I have always loved Sonnet 116 but took it at surface level. This made me think differently about it. Nice video!
The sonnet always struck me as a disturbing mixture of true love, and its impossibility.
You know Nerdwriter, my love for your vids and analysis might be impermanent according to Mr. Shakespeare, but I still love those sweet and slow, chef's kiss, closing lines you end all your video essay parts with.
;D.
God, this is beautiful. I returned to this and have this feeling that I will again in the future. Thank you.
Came back to this the other day, one of your finest deconstruction and analyses.
“If what they say is, ‘nothing is forever’ then what makes… love the exception” - Andre 3000
When you read the poem the first time and came to the line: "But bears it out even to the edge of doom" I instantly thought of a toxic relationship.
I always love your videos for your thoughts and the way you pack them in beautifully written narrations. But damn - those minimalistic, perfectly thought out animations. The way the Sonnet breaks into the lines / structure. Kudos to that as well!
When it's Nerdwriter1, I give thumbs up first, then watch the video.
no, thats silly.
i like the way you explain in all the point of view kepp on doing this kind of works
"...a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever..." - Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Ed. Tucker Brooke. London: Oxford UP: 1936. p. 34
Love that the poem ends with GG. Job done. Shakespeare out.
Great how the sonnet rhyme structure literally gives you a GG at the end
Anyone reading this should listen to Sir Laurence Olivier recite this on the Dick Cavett show. It is on RUclips. You won't regret listening to it.
I just learned how to speak this sonnet in OP (original pronunciation), so I got very excited when the notification for this video popped up on my phone :D
More poetry videos please, these are so fascinating.
Man just said this is the most famous sonnet when "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day" is sat right there...
I tried to understand all your points, which I am sure are very valid, but my head exploded.
Haven't read any S sonnets, but after watching this, i feel i should.
another thing to listen to from nerdwriter1. He never fails to amaze and leave me speechless. admit to me is something that comes later when an initial process regarding anything attached to it had happened.. Admission is half way through submitting to something for a period of time and you promise to yourself you will do anything for desired purpose, i.e a task needs to be completed, and when you don't get to the bottom of it, and you realize you didn't make it to completely, that's when admitting to the factual reality comes in and i think admission of anything must comes from the heart. It's like you made a mistake with your partner and you realize that your mistake is causing misery/anger/trouble, what you think one should do in the moment upon realization, which often happens at a later time?
So glad you made another video about poetry after all this time. Hope to see more!
Nerdwriter should drop every week 😭😭😭
Dare I say, I find there is an abstract, philosophical tone about his sonnets in general. To me, they suffer from the lack of dramatic context, which is where his gifts were at their best.
In my humble opinion, LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS / ADMIT IMPEDIMENTS is the Shakespeare's preparation for testing the lovers, as he'll be "running into impediments at every turn" all along the sonnet.
Excellent observation!!!
@@cyclonicniththanks!!
The editing of the video is amazing.
he defines his use of "admit" in his last line
O! I think the Nerdwriter analysing poetry is something I could get very comfortable with. Great video, as always!
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Shakespeare is the goat!
I think he was simply trying to verbalize the feeling of love, as most poets do, by saying what it's not- namely, all things of transient ego-bound nature. Naturally, love can not be defined for it is beyond language, time, and space...at least, a pure love of non-ego awareness is.
any nerdwriter update is a good update.
Anyone else read "admit" as allowing to enter? So that the impediments are not being allowed into the marriage of true minds.
Absolutely. That oversight very much weakened the analysis for me.
Agreed. Not a scholar, but I think he's waxing on how great, permanent and indestructible love is, without besmirching a successful marriage of "minds" i.e. for a reason other than love, which I'm guessing was more common back in his day.
Eh? The first possible definition he lists is "protect love from impediments."
A bouncer protecting a venue does not admit unruly or violent patrons because they could ruin the event.
Glad to hear Shakespeare ended each sonnet with a G G. Good sport.
Thanks for finishing that book so we can start getting more vidz on the reg. 👊
#excited
Made my Afternoon instantly better