The Passionate Pilgrim – “When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies..."” (Sonnet 138)

The Passionate Pilgrim – “When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies...” (Sonnet 138)

By the end of 1598, Shakespeare had moved out Bishopsgate and moved to St Helen's where he probably resided until around the time of Queen Elizabeth's death. 

Shakespeare probably got no money for any of his poems that appeared in the 1599 anthology entitled ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’ which was published with his name on the cover. Only two sheets of the original edition still exist though somewhere from 40 to 100 copies were probably originally published of the 1599 edition. Of the 20 poems in the collection, five are probably written by Shakespeare. These are two sonnets (Sonnet 138 and Sonnet 144 ) and three poems from ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost  (Longaville’s sonnet written to Maria in Act 4 Scene 3, Berowne’s sonnet to Rosalind in Act 4 Scene 2 and Dumaine’s poem to Catherine in Act 4 Scene 3). This type of publishing theft or plagiarism was common in Shakespeare’s time, but not quite as common as illegal downloads today. Still, the publisher, William Jaggard would have had to make some outlay for the material, unlike most modern downloaders. He would have had to pay someone to scribe down the ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ poems during a performance and would probably have seen and copied (or paid someone who had pawned a stolen sonnet or two) for the two sonnets. The interesting thing is that he chooses to attribute all the poems to W. Shakespeare on the cover. This shows us that Shakespeare had gained enough of a reputation in 1599, that someone wanted to steal from him and cash in on his name.

Let’s first look at Sonnet 138 ‘When my love swears that she is made of truth’. The sonnet is done in Shakespeare’s standard 14 lines made up of three quartets and a final rhyming couplet. The poem is about the poet’s relationship with the ‘dark lady’ and about his contemplations about his own misgivings about growing older. The poem depends on the irony of the double meaning in the word ‘lie’ both as meaning to be deceptive and as meaning to have sexual intercourse or a sexual relationship. The poet takes his lover's lies about her fidelity as naive and almost a compliment to him since it is as if she thinks of him like an “untutor’d youth”. He plays along with the game of these lies since it humours him as he grows older. He contemplates why they both lie and he decides that “… love’s best disguise is the pretense of truth…” The sonnet ends with the beautiful, but ironic rhyming couplet:

“Therefore I lie with her and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.”