Sonnet 138 Summary & Analysis
by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 138 Summary & Analysis
by William Shakespeare

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"Sonnet 138" was written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. The poem was probably written in the early 1590s—though it wasn't published until 1599, when it appeared in a pirated edition of Shakespearean poems, The Passionate Pilgrim. (It was later published in the 1609 edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets.) The poem dives into a difficult, complicated relationship. Both the speaker and the woman he loves lie to each other constantly—about small things, like the speaker's age, and bigger things, like whether his mistress is cheating on him. The two lovers end up in a paradoxical situation: they take comfort—at least, they try to take comfort—in each other's lies, instead of the love they feel for each other.

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