Sonnet 152
In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
betrayal
oaths
self-deception
closure
In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing,
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjured most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee
And all my honest faith in thee is lost,
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see;
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie!
What It Means
Shakespeare has broken oaths to love her — he was already committed elsewhere. She has broken twice as many. Both are oath-breakers. The cruelest irony: he swore she was kind and he believed it. He swore false witnesses in her honor. He wasted twenty oaths to prove something that turned out to be untrue. The final couplet is the most honest self-assessment of the sequence: he lied to himself and others, and now he knows it.
Context
The final sonnet of the Dark Lady sequence. It closes the relationship with a comprehensive admission of mutual betrayal.
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