The Philosophy of Love in Sonnet 138Shakespeare was a superb philosopher, but in his sonnets he was a philosopher of love. Shakespeare fully expounds the experiences of love and its torments in his sonnets. The philosophy of love is that love reconciles everything. Love is evil and good, lies and truth. Love is all there is. It is passion, but also deception and lies. “Sonnet 138,” is a remarkable example of Shakespeare’s philosophy of love. Written as a dramatic monologue, this sonnet (also known as a “song”) is a lyric. Like all sonnets, there are fourteen lines, with all four lines written as quatrains in abab format. The last two lines are known as the couplet. This sonnet has a staggered structure, with a main clause, a sub-clause and another sub-clause, all forming a complex sentence. The first six lines are reflected in thought. When my love swears that it is made of truth, I believe her, even if I know that she is lying, so that she can take me for an uneducated young person, ignorant of the false subtleties of the world.....