Shakespeare on Love

Earlier I gave you some wedding readings that were a little different. Contemporary poems, verses from other cultures, excerpts from books. Today, I want to go a little more traditional and look at one of the great writers of love; Shakespeare.

I’ve put together eight of his best quotes about love from his plays and sonnets for you to consider for your wedding.

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.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Love Labours Lost

But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain
But with the motion of all elements
Courses as swift as thought in every power
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye:
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.
Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx, as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Romeo And Juliet

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the ore I give to thee,

The more I have for both are infinite.

Romeo and Juliet

Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows

As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.

The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,

And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!

For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

Hamlet

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love

The Tempest

Honour, riches, marriage-blessings,

Long continuance, and increasing,

Hourly joys be still upon you!

Juno sings her blessing upon you.

The Taming of the Shrew

Say she rail; why, I’ll tell her plain
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale.
Say that she frown; I’ll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly wash’d with dew.
Say she be mute and will not speak a word;
Then I’ll commend her volubility,
and say she uttereth piercing eloquence.

I’ve added this one on at the end as an extra. It’s short and simple, but sometimes that is the best way to say anything.

Henry V

I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say, I love you.