Sonnet 138: When My Love Swears That She Is Made of Truth
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When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told. Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered be. |
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When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies |
When my love – specifically my mistress – swears that she is truthful, both as in someone who tells the truth and as in faithful to me, I do believe her even though I know she lies to me, and I know that she lies, as in has sex with, other men.
This would seem to make sense in light of the previous three sonnets which have all but declared her to be sexually voracious and highly promiscuous. Editors point towards a possible pun also on 'maid of truth': a young woman who is truthful, faithful, and, by virtue of the fact that she is a maiden, also chaste, which, if intended, would be borderline sarcastic of our Will, considering how keen on men he portrays her to be earlier. |
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That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. |
The lie the mistress tells now is specified and described in a slightly surprising motion towards the poet, relating to him directly as a person, rather than to the immaculate nature or otherwise of her relationships with other men.
Her lie suggests that she might think of me as some naive youth who has never been taught or instructed in – as the implication goes – matters of love, someone who is inexperienced and has never learnt the schemes and subterfuges that the sophisticated world uses in the pursuit of love, and more pointedly, in the pursuit of sex, since the word 'false' contains also an implied element of infidelity. PRONUNCIATION: Note that unlearned here has three syllables: [un-learn-ed]. ORIGINAL PRONUNCIATION: Note that in OP subtleties rhymes with lies above, in an ending resembling our 'ties'. |
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Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best, |
And so without reason or purpose – possibly implied also with a hint of vanity – I think that she thinks of me as young, even though she knows that I am past my prime: my best days are already over.
Shakespeare repeatedly in these sonnets refers to his age in tones that make us think he must be well into what we consider middle age. At the time when this sonnet is first published in 1598 or 99 as part of The Passionate Pilgrim, William Shakespeare is 34 or 35 years old, which means he cannot have been older than 35 when he wrote this, but as we have frequently pointed out, 30 was considered 'old' for a poet, and London was a strikingly young city: in the last episode we quoted Peter Ackroyd as saying that it has been suggested that half the population of London was aged 20 or below. |
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Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed. |
So, vainly thinking that she believes me to be young, I, in a simple-minded way or in the manner of a simpleton, give credit to what she says as if it were true; and in this way on both sides – hers and mine – simple truth, which is a pure, unadulterated, genuine truth, is being deliberately suppressed.
The juxtaposition of 'simple truth' – something that in Shakespeare's day as today is all too rare a commodity and therefore to be valued, cherished, held high, and protected – and 'simplicity', as in stupidity, ignorance, and lazy thinking, is something Shakespeare handles to tremendous effect in his 'magnificent rant' of Sonnet 66 where he presents an unrelenting list of ills in the world that make him want to throw in the towel: And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending Captain Ill - Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that to die, I leave my love alone. |
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But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
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But why does she not say that she is wrong?
'Unjust' here mostly means 'incorrect' or 'untruthful', so the primary meaning of this question is simply, why does she not just admit that she is wrong when pretending I am young, but of course with the woman's unfaithfulness fully established by now, that element too plays directly into it, so the question also means, why does she not say she is unfaithful? |
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And wherefore say not I that I am old?
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And why do I not similarly speak the truth and say that I am old?
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O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
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O the best attire, garb, or outfit for love, as well as the best way for love to conduct itself, is in making an appearance of trust, as in truth, faithfulness, trustworthiness...
In other words whether you are faithful, trustworthy, truthful or not, in matters of love it is always best to pretend to be. Whether Shakespeare truly believes this or whether he merely accommodates himself in a reality that he can't change is not immediately obvious from this poem alone. |
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And age in love loves not to have years told.
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And in matters of love, age, as in a person of advanced years, does not love to have their actual years told, meaning of course that most people would wish to seem and pretend to be younger than they are when it comes to love.
This too hardly has changed in the 430 or so years since William Shakespeare wrote this poem. The Quarto Edition here has: And age in love, loves not t'have yeares told. Some editors elect to keep the contraction of 't'have' in the Quarto Edition, but this requires the word 'yeares' to be pronounced with two syllables [year-es], which doesn't appear anywhere in all of Shakespeare's works, and so this can confidently be considered a printing error. |
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Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
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And so for this reason I lie with her and she lies with me, meaning very obviously both: I tell her untruths and she tells me untruths, and I sleep with her and she sleeps with me: the pun on 'lie' that above is merely hinted at is here fully deployed.
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And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
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And so in our respective faults – her untruthfulness and my age – we flatter ourselves and each other by our respective lies and by lying, as in having sex, with each other, sex thus in itself becoming a form of flattery.
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With Sonnet 138 William Shakespeare takes a step back and reflects on how both he and his mistress in their relationship with each other are effectively living a lie which they both actively conspire to maintain: she pretends to be faithful to him although she fully knows that he knows that she obviously isn't, and he goes along with it when she treats him as if he were an innocent young lover who not only is still in his prime but who is also uneducated in matters of love, both of which she similarly knows not to be the case.
Together with Sonnet 144 and three poems from Love's Labour's Lost, Sonnet 138 is one of five poems by William Shakespeare that were included in a collection called The Passionate Pilgrim, published in 1598 or 1599 by William Jaggard, a London printer who wrongly attributed the whole book as "by W. Shakespeare" although a handful of poems are certainly by other writers and the majority, a further 11, are of unknown origin. William Jaggard, incidentally, and in spite of this dubious practice, was later entrusted with printing the First Folio edition of William Shakespeare's plays.
The version of Sonnet 138 in The Passionate Pilgrim varies slightly from this one and reads:
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unskilful in the world's false forgeries.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best,
I, smiling, credit her false speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit's in a smoothing tongue,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I'll lie with love and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smothered be.
This earlier publication with its variations on the text that was published ten years later in the Quarto Edition of 1609 is significant for two principal reasons:
Firstly, and most importantly, it proves the contention that William Shakespeare revises his poems over time. This in itself is of interest, but it supports the notion also – and this in Shakespeare studies is considerably more contentious – that he himself was involved in the preparation of the manuscript for the 1609 Quarto Edition, because such an active involvement would be the most obvious reason for going back to a sonnet written a decade ago and making substantive changes to it. What it still doesn't tell us, let alone prove, is whether Shakespeare, beyond preparing the collection of 1609 also authorised its actual publication at that time, but it makes this rather more likely.
Secondly, and really not that much less important to our understanding of Shakespeare: the changes he makes over this time are in fact substantive. Yes, he tweaks the odd word here and there where we would say, that doesn't make much of a difference to the sonnet, but he also adjusts the meaning in places to give the poem a whole different core.
Take the fourth line of the first quatrain, for example: we know this as:
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties,
whereas The Passionate Pilgrim has:
Unlearned in the world's false forgeries.
'Subtleties', we might argue, is simply subtler, more evocative of a sophisticated world of lovers, but the meaning principally is almost the same.
The second quatrain though already shows a greater shift:
Although I know my years be past the best,
I, smiling, credit her false speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults with love's ill rest.
Shakespeare moves from someone who knowingly, smilingly, 'outfaces' the faults of his mistress to someone who 'simply' – both as in pretending to be simple and as in an uncomplicated manner – gives credit to what she says, and the result of this is that 'simple truth' is thus suppressed, now yielding the gratifying contrast between 'simple truth' and 'simplicity' and placing the falsehood on both sides equally. Note also how in the earlier version from The Passionate Pilgrim, it is he, the poet, who knows that his "years be past the best," whereas in the later version it is the mistress who knows this, there also 'days' substituting 'years'.
The biggest change though comes with the third quatrain, leading into the closing couplet:
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
This, compared to what Shakespeare turns it into, is almost banal: she says she's young and I don't say I'm old: we both just pretend to be younger than we are. In a way, so what? Doesn't everyone at some point or other... – Shakespeare, when he revisits the poem, changes this to:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
And with one stroke and four syllables we have a totally different dynamic: she lies about her truthfulness and faithfulness, and I lie about my age. Now we have ourselves an interesting constellation that feeds into each other because we both also pretend not to know that we are both lying, when of course we both do know and we both are.
And the closing couplet then grabs hold of this sharpened, more pointed situation by making the sonnet specific to 'her', rather than to 'love', which could be interpreted as a more generic observation, and he also drives home the pun on 'lies', on which, in a sense, the whole sonnet now hinges.
The other point of interest – which is in itself quite subtle – is that when ostensibly the sonnet presents an equilibrium between my mistress lying with me and me lying with her, it actually puts rather more focus, and therefore 'blame', if that's what we want to call it, on her. Whether he does so consciously and deliberately or not is not something I would wish to hazard a guess at, but in actual fact, Shakespeare places the lie about his age on his mistress's tongue rather than primarily his own. He is not saying: I lie to her about my age, he is saying, I do not correct her when she lies about my age. And this shift too becomes much more pronounced in the 1609 version of the poem, compared to the earlier one of The Passionate Pilgrim.
Sonnet 138 is not an overly challenging, let alone problematic poem, but although Shakespeare seems to mostly enjoy with it the contrast between 'truth' and 'lie' and the pun on 'lie' as in an untruth and as in 'lie with someone' to mean to have sex with them, it still manages, in a roundly Shakespearean way, to convey a great insight into human nature. Which is that many relationships – of whatever nature precisely they be – depend on an intricate system of what Katherine Duncan-Jones in her Arden edition of the Sonnets calls "mutually dependent self-deception." In business and friendship, as well as love, we human beings often function best when we conspire, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, to leave things unsaid that are not just too obvious, but also perhaps in some way or other too painful to mention, or too complicated to explain.
And that just serves to remind us that William Shakespeare, even when he is mostly perhaps being witty and clever, and his conscious mind may not be concerning itself with profound questions of psychology or philosophy infuses his work with great wisdom. Which is the mark of a truly great artist.
Together with Sonnet 144 and three poems from Love's Labour's Lost, Sonnet 138 is one of five poems by William Shakespeare that were included in a collection called The Passionate Pilgrim, published in 1598 or 1599 by William Jaggard, a London printer who wrongly attributed the whole book as "by W. Shakespeare" although a handful of poems are certainly by other writers and the majority, a further 11, are of unknown origin. William Jaggard, incidentally, and in spite of this dubious practice, was later entrusted with printing the First Folio edition of William Shakespeare's plays.
The version of Sonnet 138 in The Passionate Pilgrim varies slightly from this one and reads:
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unskilful in the world's false forgeries.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best,
I, smiling, credit her false speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit's in a smoothing tongue,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I'll lie with love and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smothered be.
This earlier publication with its variations on the text that was published ten years later in the Quarto Edition of 1609 is significant for two principal reasons:
Firstly, and most importantly, it proves the contention that William Shakespeare revises his poems over time. This in itself is of interest, but it supports the notion also – and this in Shakespeare studies is considerably more contentious – that he himself was involved in the preparation of the manuscript for the 1609 Quarto Edition, because such an active involvement would be the most obvious reason for going back to a sonnet written a decade ago and making substantive changes to it. What it still doesn't tell us, let alone prove, is whether Shakespeare, beyond preparing the collection of 1609 also authorised its actual publication at that time, but it makes this rather more likely.
Secondly, and really not that much less important to our understanding of Shakespeare: the changes he makes over this time are in fact substantive. Yes, he tweaks the odd word here and there where we would say, that doesn't make much of a difference to the sonnet, but he also adjusts the meaning in places to give the poem a whole different core.
Take the fourth line of the first quatrain, for example: we know this as:
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties,
whereas The Passionate Pilgrim has:
Unlearned in the world's false forgeries.
'Subtleties', we might argue, is simply subtler, more evocative of a sophisticated world of lovers, but the meaning principally is almost the same.
The second quatrain though already shows a greater shift:
Although I know my years be past the best,
I, smiling, credit her false speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults with love's ill rest.
Shakespeare moves from someone who knowingly, smilingly, 'outfaces' the faults of his mistress to someone who 'simply' – both as in pretending to be simple and as in an uncomplicated manner – gives credit to what she says, and the result of this is that 'simple truth' is thus suppressed, now yielding the gratifying contrast between 'simple truth' and 'simplicity' and placing the falsehood on both sides equally. Note also how in the earlier version from The Passionate Pilgrim, it is he, the poet, who knows that his "years be past the best," whereas in the later version it is the mistress who knows this, there also 'days' substituting 'years'.
The biggest change though comes with the third quatrain, leading into the closing couplet:
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
This, compared to what Shakespeare turns it into, is almost banal: she says she's young and I don't say I'm old: we both just pretend to be younger than we are. In a way, so what? Doesn't everyone at some point or other... – Shakespeare, when he revisits the poem, changes this to:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
And with one stroke and four syllables we have a totally different dynamic: she lies about her truthfulness and faithfulness, and I lie about my age. Now we have ourselves an interesting constellation that feeds into each other because we both also pretend not to know that we are both lying, when of course we both do know and we both are.
And the closing couplet then grabs hold of this sharpened, more pointed situation by making the sonnet specific to 'her', rather than to 'love', which could be interpreted as a more generic observation, and he also drives home the pun on 'lies', on which, in a sense, the whole sonnet now hinges.
The other point of interest – which is in itself quite subtle – is that when ostensibly the sonnet presents an equilibrium between my mistress lying with me and me lying with her, it actually puts rather more focus, and therefore 'blame', if that's what we want to call it, on her. Whether he does so consciously and deliberately or not is not something I would wish to hazard a guess at, but in actual fact, Shakespeare places the lie about his age on his mistress's tongue rather than primarily his own. He is not saying: I lie to her about my age, he is saying, I do not correct her when she lies about my age. And this shift too becomes much more pronounced in the 1609 version of the poem, compared to the earlier one of The Passionate Pilgrim.
Sonnet 138 is not an overly challenging, let alone problematic poem, but although Shakespeare seems to mostly enjoy with it the contrast between 'truth' and 'lie' and the pun on 'lie' as in an untruth and as in 'lie with someone' to mean to have sex with them, it still manages, in a roundly Shakespearean way, to convey a great insight into human nature. Which is that many relationships – of whatever nature precisely they be – depend on an intricate system of what Katherine Duncan-Jones in her Arden edition of the Sonnets calls "mutually dependent self-deception." In business and friendship, as well as love, we human beings often function best when we conspire, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, to leave things unsaid that are not just too obvious, but also perhaps in some way or other too painful to mention, or too complicated to explain.
And that just serves to remind us that William Shakespeare, even when he is mostly perhaps being witty and clever, and his conscious mind may not be concerning itself with profound questions of psychology or philosophy infuses his work with great wisdom. Which is the mark of a truly great artist.
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If you spot a mistake or if you have any comments or suggestions, please use the contact page to get in touch.
To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!