Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth

“Sonnet 138” by William Shakespeare was part of his sonnet sequence, originally published in 1609, comprising 154 sonnets. Prior to this, some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, including sonnets from his play Love’s Labour’s Lost (1597), appeared in a poetry anthology called The Passionate Pilgrim, published by William Jaggard in 1598 or 1599. By the time the sonnets were published as a complete sequence, Shakespeare had become a noteworthy figure in the London theater scene.

Shakespearean sonnets follow a specific rhyme scheme and meter within 14 lines. A key figure in the English Renaissance, Shakespeare was influenced by a number of Italian and English sonneteers (writers of sonnets), including Francesco Petrarch, Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser. “Sonnet 138” explores the themes of Truth and Lies, Age and Experience, and The Nature of Love.

Poet Biography

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1564. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582, and they had three children: Susanna, Judith, and Hamnet. Hamnet, who was twin to Judith and Shakespeare’s only son, died in 1596 at the age of 11, possibly due to the bubonic plague.