Sonnet No. 116
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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Sonnet No. 116, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
P.S. This is one of over a hundred love sonnets written by Shakespeare to a young man to whom he was deeply devoted. If you think we shouldn’t admit impediments to people in similar relationships nowadays then perhaps you would consider signing the petition organized by the coalition for equal marriage…
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In the Dark 
March 12, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Would be interested to hear the views of Shakespearean scholars here, but I think maybe you assume too much. Financial patronage from a wealthy aristocrat can buy quite a lot of deep devotion from a struggling and aspiring poet and playwright.
March 12, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Shakespearean scholars do argue about the nature of the relationship between Shakespeare and the young man to whom the sonnets are addressed, and to the identity of the latter. But what’s more important, I think, is that the poems do express something universal about human affection; the fact that as written they are from one man to another is almost irrelevant.
March 12, 2012 at 10:40 pm
The dedicatee of the sonnets is not necessarily the same person as the author had in mind in the poems. Personally I think Brenda James has cracked the mystery of the dedicatee (and indeed the identity of the author…) Also the English language is remarkably impoverished in having one word, Love, where Greek had four (agape, eros, philia, storge) with different meanings.
March 20, 2012 at 7:11 pm
Is it a posh pronunciation of the word described to heavy food?
March 13, 2012 at 10:18 pm
Hmmm… do tell. I typed Brenda James into Google, but am not sure I got the right one.
March 13, 2012 at 10:26 pm
And I thought the dedication was written by the publisher to the person who nicked them. The target is usually assumed to be Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
March 13, 2012 at 10:31 pm
It’s a well-known fact that Shakespeare’s Sonnets weren’t actually written by Shakespeare, but by someone else who had the same name.
March 13, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Brenda James identified a code of a sort common in Shakespeare’s time which indicated that the sonnets had something to do with Sir Henry Neville. James argues that he IS Shakespeare. The circumstantial evidence is not bad, and if you deny that a Stratford Grammar man could have had that depth of knowledge of European geography and court etiquette then he is certainly a far better fit than any other candidate (Bacon, Wriothsley, Marlowe etc). At present, James’ website with its summary appears to be down but it is
http://www.henryneville.com/
Anton
March 14, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Still is. I get the gist though, from reading this rather scathing assessment:
http://stromata.typepad.com/stromata_blog/2005/09/a_new_shakespea.html