Eye of the Beholder: Truth and Deception in Shakespeare's Sonnets

My thesis, Eye of the Beholder: Truth and Deception in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, considers the use and abuse of deception in Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence. The sequence is through the eyes of the sonnet speaker, who expresses his complicated experiences of truth and lies in his relationships with his beloveds. The speaker’s relationships with the youth and the mistress embody emotions of love, hate, trust, and betrayal. These conflicting and confusing experiences in love expose the speaker of his relationship with and understanding of deception. The speaker is a particular character who appears capable of believing lies. He experiences self-deception throughout the sequence. Despite his seemingly constant association to lies, the speaker seems to strive for a sense of truth, or more specifically, his sense of truth. Overall, this thesis seeks to unravel the complicated nature of truth and deception between the speaker and his beloveds and the effects of such in Shakespeare’s Sonnets