Sonnet 116 is just one of the many great works of Shakespeare. In it, he identifies what love is, and what it is not. His idea is that love is unbreakable, and will prevail through all hardships. Shakespeare’s word choice is remarkable. “Never shaken”, “fixed mark”, “height.” All of these words give a mood of strength and continuity.
Shakespeare’s main concept that he was trying to get the reader(s) the grasp is that love is an overwhelming force that is strong and undeniable through whatever endeavor. “It is and ever fixed mark that looks upon tempest and is never shaken.” Shakespeare envisioned a love that is consistent and outlasting. “Love is not Time’s fool.” Love doesn’t change – true love never goes away.
With Shakespeare’s use of the sonnet form in his writing, he introduces the reader(s) to a more comfortable writing scheme. Shakespeare’s writing uses the iambic pentameter rhyme scheme, which is said to be the closest to regular speech. Every other word is stressed in his writingwhich naturally occurs in the English vernacular. Thus, a reader would feel at ease when reading Shakespeare’s works.
The last line in a quatrain is vital to the mood of a poem. Since a quatrain is basically two couplets that vary in rhyming pattern, the last line of the quatrain naturally appeals to the reader(s). Also, it stands out because it’s the end of the rhyme, the emotional climax for the poem. Therefore, writers like Shakespeare put more effort into making these particular lines more emotional than others. Shakespeare mastered this and used words such as “Doom” and “Loved”, which are crucial to the powerful mood of the sonnet.
Shakespeare’s word choice and his use of the sonnet form has allowed him to communicate the aspects of his writings to the reader(s) in a comfortable way that, for many years, an abundance of poets have tried to duplicate.