Sonnet 115: Those Lines That I Before Have Writ Do Lie

SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

With Sonnet 115 William Shakespeare turns his attention to the perplexing paradox that a love that is experienced as complete and absolute and therefore perfect, such as his love for his young man, may turn out, over time, to have been but a fledgling infant compared to the even fuller, more profound, more mature love that it has the potential to grow into.

In acknowledging that love can evolve and grow over time it sets the premise that love itself is changeable – here for the better, to be more deeply and more sincerely felt than ever before – and it therefore not only concedes, but claims as a lover's right, the necessity, perhaps, to revise statements made about love in the past, and in doing so to effectively give those pronouncements the lie.