A Marriage Proposal
I attended a ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Smith Center in Las Vegas several years ago and although the performance was flawless and beautiful, a young man appeared immediately after the company took their bows and asked us to stay a couple of minutes. He recited this sonnet and asked a young lady from the cast to join him. He bent down on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage.
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 prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
The purity of his love compensated for his unpolished delivery and awkward cadence. I don’t recall any parts of the ballet performance but I remember a beautiful heartwarming and heart-stopping moment. And then she said “Yes!”