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Shakespeare Wedding Readings

Shakespeare's poetry has long been a favorite choice at weddings in North America and Europe. Sonnet 116 is the most popular because it speaks to the theme of marriage directly, but Sonnet 18, hailed as the greatest love poem ever written in English, comes a close second. Please click on the sonnet links for detailed explanatory notes.

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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 wandering 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 116)

He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
(King John, 2.1.447)

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
(Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.139-41)

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 dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
(Sonnet 18)

One half of me is yours, the other half yours
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.
(The Merchant of Venice, 3.2.17-9)

A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.
(All's Well That Ends Well, 4.2.76)

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
(Hamlet, 2.2.123-6)

The match
Were rich and honourable; besides, the gentleman
Is full of virtue, bounty, worth and qualities
Beseeming such a wife as your fair daughter
(The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 3.1.64-7)

Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.
(Sonnet 88)

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 stopp'd:
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockl'd 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
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
(Love's Labours Lost, 4.3.327-55)

But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1.1.76-8)

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain...
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain
(Venus and Adonis)

Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings upon you.
(The Tempest, 4.1.117-20)

I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause
But rather reason thus with reason fetter,
Love sought is good, but given unsought better.
(Twelfth Night, 3.1.151-6)

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
(Sonnet 29)

All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
(Sonnet 43)

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Related Articles

 Shakespeare on Love
 Shakespeare on the Ups and Downs of Marriage
 Shakespeare on Friendship
 Shakespeare on Jealousy
 Quotations About William Shakespeare

 Why Shakespeare is so Important
 Shakespeare's Language