In "Sonnet 116," the narrator states that he should not admit impediments or obstacles to the marriage of true minds. The question here is: What is meant by "true minds"? An interpretation of this phrase could be that "true" is not meant as "truth," but possibly "true" as an arrow which flies straight and "true" to its target: two minds focused on each other with almost a telepathic connection. Another interpretation could be "true" as in loyal. Loyalty in a relationship would allow love to grow and blossom hopefully into the mature, friendship-love in "Sonnet 116."

To explore the definition of "true minds" in "Sonnet 116," one must read the first sentence aloud. Word stresses in the verse are important for interpretation, as different meanings are implied through stressing different words. For example, examine the first sentence of the sonnet:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.

At the first reading, the stress naturally falls on "not." Notice what happens when the stress is placed on "me":

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.

The narrator then gives the impression that someone else is possibly placing impediments in the way of the narrator's relationship. The reader naturally wonders who this might be. One possible conclusion is the narrator's loved one, the other "true mind." Thus, the narrator is presenting his idea of what love should be, possibly because his own love falls short of the mark. Landry suggests that sonnets 115 and 117 are related to 116. The narrator's love in "Sonnet 115" has undergone trial, but this has not resulted in the loss of that love. Without having sustained any diminution of love, the narrator of Sonnet 116 attempts to woo back his loved one by describing what love should and should not be to persons who truly trust and love one another. "Sonnet 117" looks back toward "Sonnet 116" and invites the lover to chastise the narrator for all his failings listed in "Sonnet 117." The narrator tries to excuse his failings as the "means by which he sought to test and to demonstrate what he hoped for or assumed in `Sonnet 116.'" (Landry 100).

The second sentence of "Sonnet 116," which completes the first quatrain, states that love does not alter or fade away because changes occur as a normal course of events in relationships. "Or bends with the remover to remove" (line 4) is a negation toward conditional love. "True minds" rise above the demand that requirements be met as a condition for bestowing love, or insisting the prospective lover change some physical aspect to win love.

In the second quatrain, the narrator defines love for thereader."True minds" find love an "ever fixed mark" (line 4). In comparing love to a fixed mark, like a beacon which shines through a foggy night to guide sailors, the narrator implies that love will safely guide lovers through times of trouble.Again, the "true" beacon and the "true minds" form a formidable guardian to love threatened. "It is the star to every wandering bark, / Whose worth's unknown, although his highth be taken" (lines 7-8) is another implication of the guiding aspect of love in the lives of "true minds." The worth, or value, is unfathomable even though the force of the guiding love is felt by the "true minds."

In the third quatrain, "true minds" see past the changes in each other that occur with the passing of years. The narrator is expressing a hope that as "true minds" he and his lover will be able to look past the diminution of physical beauty and sexual desire and continue to love each other until the end of time.

Love alters not with his [Time's] brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (ll. 11-12)

The idea of bearing on an unchanging, or "true" course is present in the last two lines of the third quatrain. A "true" course would be the goal of a sailor, and here becomes the goal of "true minds."

In Critical Survey of Poetry, Gary Waller writes that "Sonnet 116" "can therefore be seen as a kind of bad faith, a false dread–false, because it freezes lovers in inactivity when they should, on the contrary, accept their finitude as possible" (2945). "True minds" in a mature, other-put-first love would be the first to know that their love requires effort to maintain over time. Even in a situation where the lovers are not able to be together, love must be maintained through rumination and communication. In a marriage or any relationship, the lovers must struggle to maintain the "true mind" connection. Everyday pressures and routines can make one put his love on a back burner, so to speak. By so doing, however, one runs the risk of allowing the flame in the beacon to go out and thus extinguishing the "true mind" connection.

"True minds," then, see past the changes in each other which occur with the passing of time. "True minds" set a course through the years with the goal of eternity, or at least their allotted time here on Earth. "True minds" use their love as a beacon, or guiding star, to steer them safely through the pitfalls and storms of life. "True minds" strive to transcend conditional love, and in so striving form a bond: two minds concentrated on each other, attuned to each other's thoughts and feelings. "True minds" are lovers who always put the other first, no matter the situation. "Sonnet 116" expresses all of this in exquisite simplicity.

Works Cited