Love and Deception
...erson’s words if they are openly aware to their dishonesty. The two lines seem to give the reader a sense of how the speaker feels about the situation, and its difficulty. But the contradictory expectation of believing her though she lies is illogical, “Our experience in understanding the two lines is like the speaker’s experience of believing a lie: we understand the lines and understand that they cannot logically be understood.” (Booth 478). As the poem continues, the love via deception concept is extended to the lover in question, “Thus vainly thinking that she thinks my 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.” (Bevington. Sonnet 138 6-9). The theme becomes a mutual concept on both sides, further confusing the idea of love through deception to the reader, but still maintaining the speaker’s difficulty with the topic. She refuses to acknowledge that he is older than he or she claims, and he agrees to maintain that false truth in their eyes. “However, the emphasis of line 8 is on mutuality, and it thus reasserts the suggestions of the lady’s complex self-delusion” (Booth 479). This idea is further explained by the speaker three lines down in the sonnet, “Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, / And age in love loves not to have years told.” (Bevington. Sonnet 138 11-12). Line eleven sums up the love through deception theme, with the best habit of love’s being that to seemingly trust. Line twelve justifies the fact that neither of the two lovers will admit to the age discrepancy brought up earlier in the sonnet. The fact that both the speaker and the love he is speaking about are in denial and deception of one another, and yet still in love, is the fascinating piece of Sonnet 138. Not only is this central theme interesting enough alone, but it is enhanced by Shakespeare’s clever use of words that incorporate double meanings throughout the sonnet. The second to last line of the sonnet, “Therefore I lie with her, ” (Bevington. Sonnet 138 13) has the most obvious example of double meaning. This line taken by itself seems to mean that he lies with his lover, as in being dishonest along with her. If we take the last line with this line, “And in our faults by lies we flattered be.” (Bevington. Sonnet 138 14) the sentence then seems to insinuate that his lying with her, is actually laying with her...