Sonnet 116, by William Shakespeare 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-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheek 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.

Which of the following statements best describes how lines 1–12 in Sonnet 116 develop the ideas of the poem?

The third quatrain develops ideas different than those expressed in the first two quatrains.

All of the quatrains express a single thought in different ways.

Each quatrain shows the speaker’s feelings of love from a different perspective.

The meaning of the poem changes in the second quatrain.

Each of the quatrains describes love as constant and never changing. The first says that love isn't love if the feeling changes when the person who is loved changes. The second says that love never changes "it is an ever-fixed mark". It continues this idea of love being constant in the last quatrain when it talks about how love doesn't change over time. He says that a person's looks will change and alter of time, but love does not. It isn't until the final couplet does he comment on this topic of love being constant. This content structure is typical of Shakespeare's sonnets.