Sonnet 109: O Never Say That I Was False of Heart

SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

Sonnet 109 is the first of two truly remarkable sonnets that speak of William Shakespeare's own infidelities towards his young lover during a period of prolonged absence.

Although they do not form a strictly tied pair, together these two poems position our poet and his relationship in an entirely new light, because they for the first time genuinely acknowledge that he, too, like his young lover, has succumbed to temptation elsewhere while they were apart, but they both affirm him to be the only one who ever mattered and the one who truly matters now.