Time Doeth No Evil Here

It seems to me that Shakespeare glories in the beauties of love in all its stages. There is love that is young and innocent and takes glory in itself. There is also love that ages well and shows it's buds of May even in its December. That having been said, I feel that Shakespeare is showing how the truest love must be a combination of both May and December.

I could reference a number of sonnets, but I'll use 116 since it's my favorite. Here Shakespeare refers to the love of "true minds." His focus is the importance of love being more than the physical, more than the sexual, more than the material. True minds that meet in love can overcome all tempests and defeat all foes.

To me, this isn't a love that started out great but ended in disaster. This isn't a husband that eventually commits adultery or a wife that decides to walk out on her family for some life she was never able to live. I feel that he is ultimately saying that this sort of love would never end in disaster because it is basically against its very nature. This seems a very hard concept to understand given the current divorce rate and the overall decent of human relations into a state of deceit and betrayal. You can hardly turn on the TV or go to the theatre or read a novel without learning about the fickleness of man (and woman). Shakespeare is referring to an uncorrupted sort of love that survives the storms of life.

I think that when he refers to "alterations" he is taking into considerations the alterations of life that come rather than the alterations of the individual. I don't think that he is saying you love someone your entire life even if they stop loving you. That would completely go against the idea that it was a "marriage of true minds" to begin with. I assume he is referring to the alterations of circumstance or health or appearance rather than the natural evolution of a person's intellect or character. Hopefully, if it began as a "marriage of true minds," two people's characters would evolve together rather than apart.

Basically it comes down to Time not being the enemy or the controlling force of love. Rather it is just part of life and though its "sickle" might have advantage over the physical attributes of love it in no way signals the 'judgement day' when love will somehow be ruled ineffectual simply because the bloom of youth has passed.