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

While they are some of the most well-known sonnets written in English today, the first edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets was published at a time when sonnets were declining in popularity. Writing for the Folger Library’s Shakespeare Documented, Erin A. McCarthy elaborates on this: “The 1590s were the peak of the sonnet vogue in England: 20 first edition sonnet books appeared between 1590 and 1599. While some sonnet sequences were printed or reprinted during the seventeenth century, by 1609, the form was a bit dated.” English sonnet sequences of the 16th century included Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, published in 1591, and Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti, published in 1595. However, some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, such as “Sonnet 138,” were published in anthologies and shared in private before the 1600s.

The sonnet form, which originated in Italy, gained the interest of English poets after Thomas Wyatt translated Petrarch’s sonnets in the anthology called Tottel’s Miscellany. Francesco Petrarch is credited with popularizing the sonnet form in Italy in the 1300s. Petrarch’s Italian form of the sonetto, which means “little song” in Italian, differs from the English forms. It contains an octave and a sestet—a section of eight lines followed by a section of six lines after a volta, or a turn in the direction of thought. The sonnet in Renaissance England also generally contained 14 lines, with varying rhyme schemes and an ending couplet, two lines that answer the question the poem has posed or provide the twist that a Petrarchan sestet would contain.

Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence includes 154 poems. Both “Sonnet 138” and “Sonnet 144” appeared in an anthology, The Passionate Pilgrim (1598 or 1599), before his other sonnets were published together as a collection in 1609. These two sonnets are part of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets, which span from “Sonnet 127” to “Sonnet 154.” The Dark Lady is a woman whose identity is uncertain. Shakespeare notes that she has dark—or “dun,” a dull, grayish-brown—skin and hair, which is what caused scholars to refer to the unnamed woman as the “Dark Lady.”

Shakespeare also addressed the first 126 sonnets in the sequence to a Fair Youth. Many of these sonnets include elements that could be interpreted as romantic or erotic, causing some scholars to question Shakespeare’s sexuality. The dedication of his entire sonnet sequence is made out to “W. H.,” which could be the initials of either the Fair Youth or the Dark Lady, or someone else entirely.