#sonnet 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 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:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Although the additional lines are quite ambiguous in meaning, they read more politically when read in the collection of a Royalist, surrounded by Royalist poetry. The added lines potentially transform the sonnet from a meditation on romantic love into a powerful political statement. It is worth noting that the public performance of songs was outlawed during the Republican regime. Many musicians, like Henry Lawes himself, survived by secret private performances in the home. Not only does this text provide us with a new example of how Shakespeare was being read during the civil war, but also how his texts were being politically repurposed to suit the issues of the day.