Truth

The poem asks readers to consider the relationship between truth and the written word. In the early modern period, the line between the two was frequently blurred. Fiction certainly existed, in the form of plays and in some poems, but the novel did not exist as a form. The word “fictions,” as Herbert uses it in the first line of the poem, was more likely to refer to falsehoods than to a literary genre (1). As fictional writing, in the form of epic poems, popular plays, and, increasingly, fiction written in prose (which would soon evolve into the novel) became popular in English, there was increasing cultural anxiety about the relationship between writing and truth.

During Herbert’s lifetime, there were dozens of occasions where theatres were ordered to close by the government. Sometimes, this was a result of disease, but just as often it was due...