With his celebrated and oft-recited Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare offers not so much a definition as a characterisation of what true love is: unshakeable and unaffected by external changes or temptations, steady and dependable as a lodestar in the darkest, stormiest hour, and everlasting "even to the edge of doom." With its religious overtones that echo the Christian marriage vows and invoke absolute certainties in a world that is inherently uncertain, it speaks to generations of lovers in a language that is direct and easy to understand. It is hardly surprising, then, that together with Sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, and perhaps the nearly as famous Sonnet 29, When in Disgrace With Fortune and Men's Eyes, Sonnet 116 occupies the top spot of Shakespeare's Sonnets 'Greatest Hits', and it is also one of the most confident statements made by Shakespeare about, as much as in, his craft, poetry.

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