Lieber Herr Nielsen,

Entschuldigen Sie bitte die sofortige Ergänzung meines gestrigen Briefes.
Ich leide an Perseveration. "Perseveration (von lateinisch perseverare, 
„anhalten“) bezeichnet das krankhafte Beharren, Haftenbleiben oder 
Nachwirken von einmal aufgetauchten psychischen Eindrücken (z.B. Gedanken 
oder Vorstellungen)."(Wikipedia.de) Hab lange über meine Deutung des 
116. Shakespeare Sonetts nachgedacht, und möchte darauf zurückkommen. 
Um dem anderweitig unvermeidlichen Vermengen der Sprachen aus dem Wege 
zu gehen, schreibe ich Englisch:

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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

The verb "to marry" is transitive. He marries her. She marries him.
Although the noun "marriage" more commonly refers to the state of 
being married, it may also, and perhaps more fundamentally, designate
the act of marrying. Consider that in the eminently correct sentence: 
"His marriage into a Polish family was a source of great bliss," 
"marriage" refers primarily to his action and does not identify the 
union that ensued. Similarly I interpret the sonnet's first lines:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love

to mean 

Let me not contemplate the limits of love
for true minded persons,

precisely when those limits are tested
by the "alteration" (or infidelity) of the
other person who is the object of that love.

In the fourth line:
"Or bends with the remover to remove."
the "remover" is the paramour or the
seducer who purports to "remove(s)" 
the loved person from the lover.

On initial reflection I charge myself with
male chauvinism for assigning the implicit
(or is it explicit?) infidelity to the woman,
especially in view of William James' insightful
ditty:

"Hogamus higamous, men are polygamous.
Higamous hogamous, women, monogamous."

But when I reread the sonnet's last lines,

"If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no MAN ever lov'd."

I'm not so sure. Shakespeare might have
written, without impairing his melody:

"If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no ONE ever lov'd."

But he didn't; and the sonnet speaks for itself.

Herzliche Grüße an Sie beide.

Jochen Meyer