How many Renaissance Era authors can you name? Most likely, if you can name any, this number is in the single digits. There’s a chance you’ve heard of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, or maybe Geoffery Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”. However, there is one author I can guarantee you’ve heard of – William Shakespeare. While he’s most well known for his plays, including “Richard III”, “Hamlet”, and “Romeo and Juliet”, some might not be as familiar with his poems. A good number of Shakespeare’s poetry revolves around the idea of eternal love – a love so great that it lasts beyond the physical memories of the two lovers. For someone of Shakespeare’s level of fame, this is quite the statement (though there was no way of him knowing this at the time). However, in his Sonnet 116 “Let me not to the marriage of true minds”, and Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”, he reminisces on the strength of love above all other emotions and does his very best to persuade the reader that love outlasts any other human thing.

The idea of love being stronger and older than anything else in this world is not a Renaissance-era idea, or even a post-1st century A.D. idea. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, is said to be the eldest of the gods and, unlike the rest of the Olympians, a daughter of Ouranous – the literal Earth – making her the most powerful of the gods. In Roman mythology, Cupid, the god of love, was feared on the same level as the god of death. The Romans believed if Cupid disliked you, he could curse you with a disastrous love and ruin your life. There are a dozen other examples I could give – however, all of this goes to show that the idea of love being a powerful force in the universe was not a new one to Shakespeare’s time. 

In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, he spends the first part of the poem talking about how all the loveliest things about summer eventually come to an end. Then, the poem takes a sharp turn as, even though he started the poem off with “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (line 1), he explains all the reasons he actually cannot compare the subject to said season. He describes how “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimm’d…” (lines 5-6), before saying to the subject, “But thy eternal summer shall not fade…” (line 9), thereby placing her on a more eternal path than summertime. Although summer is a season that comes back year after year, it also dies off year after year. In this sonnet, Shakespeare is contrasting his love for the speaker with summer’s eternal battle with nature by saying his love will never fade or die off, even if it might eventually return.

Comparatively, in Sonnet 116, Shakespeare contrasts his idea of love against the most powerful forces of nature. He writes 

“O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 

It is the star to every wand’ring 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:” (lines 5-12). 

Very few forces of nature are seen as more powerful than a tempest or the night sky, or even time itself. However, Shakespeare argues that love is so powerful that it seems to laugh in the face of these obstacles. He even hints at the idea that love conquers even death – in many cultures and religions, a sickle is a symbol of life coming to an end, just as it cuts down grain in a field. Also, many personified images of Death show him with a sort of scythe or sickle.

In comparing these two Sonnets, we can clearly paint ourselves a picture of how Shakespeare viewed love. However, to look to the historical side of his works for a moment, Shakespeare was not known for having a great love story himself. His wife, Anne Hathaway (no, not that Anne Hathaway) lived in Stratford-upon-Avon with their three – after the death of their son in 1596, two – children, Shakespeare moved to London where he gained fame and notoriety and rarely visited his children and wife. He and his wife had married out of necessity – at the time of their marriage, she was already pregnant with their first child – but didn’t have the deep, empowering relationship that one might think they did based on Shakespeare’s writing. While most literary critics believe Shakespeare had another woman he was actually writing these poems about, her identity has remained unknown throughout the centuries.

Sonnets 18 and 116, although both published in 1609 as a much larger group of poetry, may not have been written at the same time, they hold many of the same ideas. They use imagery of powerful forces such as nature’s seasons, tempests, time, and death to show how love conquers everything. He ends Sonnet 18 with “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” (lines 13-14) and Sonnet 116 with “If this be error and upon me proved, / I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” (lines 13-14) Contrary to the rest of both poems, these lines are both sets of rhyming couplets. They both feel as though they speak in answer to the rest of the poems, speaking directly to the reader instead of the subject. They tell the reader they are the reason Shakespeare’s love for his subject goes on forever, and almost challenge them to dispute his claim of how powerful love is – he tells the reader straight-out that, if his poem is wrong, then no one has ever truly loved. By ending Sonnet 18 by saying his love for the subject will last “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see…” (line 13), he is challenging time and death itself. The fact that this poem is still taught and analyzed today tells you just who won that fight.