William Shakespeare is touted as the playwright who defined modern cliches and created nuanced plays that spat at the traditions of nobility. Behind closed doors, he wrote 154 sonnets for a mysterious W.H. figure. One of these sonnets is Sonnet 138: “When my love swears that she is made of truth[.]”
The poem seems to be written in iambic pentameter and follows the classic Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme (ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG). It features three 4-lined stanzas and one couplet with a volta in the middle. Typically, each line is written in 10 syllables except for line 4— though it could be assumed that the first word should be spoken as “Un-Learn-Èd” to keep the 10-syllable structure. These exceptions are sprinkled all around the poem. For example, lines 7 and 13 invert the rules of the Shakespearean sonnet by switching which syllables are stressed and unstressed at their beginnings.
I believe the poem is about the speaker’s relationship with his sweetheart and their relationship on a stack of falsehoods towards each other. It highlights that the speaker is aware of the fallacies their relationship is built upon, but he continues the lies as there is no point in stopping. As the speaker stated: “Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,/And age in love loves not to have years told.” (Shakespeare, Line 11–12) Love is about superficial trust, and age is not something that should be told with such strong feelings. These lines along with the previous rhetorical questions in lines 9–10 demonstrate a shift in the speaker’s mentality about his relationship with his mistress. Though he knows he is filled with lies by lying about how youthful he is, so is she with her menagerie of fraudulent truths. Yet, they can still love each other beyond the dishonesty because they flatter each other’s lies for the other’s sake.
Yes, the accent mark over the “ed” means you should pronounce it, in order to keep the correct meter. Do you think this poem is cynical about the nature of love, or honest?
I think it’s an honest interpretation of love. A lot of love is not just about the truth and trust between two people. There are always going to be hidden aspects about each person that they do not want to share. I feel it is too optimistic of a viewpoint to think that love should be honest and straightforward. Rather, even a layer of deceit can bring about deeper feelings of love. The poem demonstrates this through its couplet: “Therefore I lie with her and she with me,/And in our faults by lies we flattered be.” (Shakespeare, Line 13–14) These lines highlight that no matter how much the speaker and the mistress know about the truth beneath all the words and lies, they still love and fond each other so much that they can respect the lies.
I think this poem, in some ways, links back to the “Senseless Stone” sonnet as well. In both, you get the sense that there is a tension in the relationship, but one that the author is aware of–in the earlier sonnet, the speaker seemed somewhat aware of his dramatics and criticized his love for it, but in a way that almost made light of the relationship, as if he wash overacting and she was not putting up with it. Here, similarly, the speaker is pointing to the lies told by both him and his mistress, but there is again a self-awareness that brings some levity into the poem. Both he and his mistress are telling each other these lies, and they both know it, but they keep saying it in order to keep their relationship solid.