Sonnet 138 immediately struck a chord with me the first time I read it. I was sick of happy love poems that seemed to do nothing but praise the girl's beauty; I longed to read sonnets that are darker, more complicated and perhaps morbid. So I was surprised that the author of "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" wrote a sonnet describing a complex and difficult relationship: a mutual relationship based on lies. It did not take me long to discover that there's more to 138 than just a fascinating theme - it was a treasure trove of puns, figurative language, allusions, paradoxes and other such subtleties.

The sonnet began with a seemingly paradoxical situation: the author's mistress swears that she's faithful and truthful, and the author states that he believes her even though he knows she lies. Pretty emphatic and defining words are used here, the girl...