Shakespeare-Upun-Avon and the Benefits of Face-Saving

"Is she your daughter?" I asked the woman who was playing with a child in the YMCA pool. I was exercising in a corner of the pool. The girl had sought me out so she could proudly display the gap in her teeth from a missing baby tooth.

"No. She's my granddaughter, but thank you," the woman replied with a laugh.

In fact, I was pretty sure she was too old to be the child's mother. But I was not about to say this aloud.

Later in our conversation, she found a way to suggest I looked quite young, too (for my apparent age).

The conversation got me thinking about Shakespeare's Sonnet #138, and its memorable last couplet:

Therefore I lie with her and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Now, unlike our exchange, the narrator in the sonnet is referring to himself and a lover who have both lied to each other—about the youthfulness of the narrator's looks in the lover's case, for example. But the essential, general point, so dazzlingly captured with puns and wordplay, is that we will find ways to flatter others and they us, whether they be lovers or brief acquaintances. The flattery amounts to lies that we all know we are telling, but we tell them anyway as if they were truths.

Would we have it any other way? These are harmless untruths. They make life much more pleasant than otherwise.

The couplet then sent me down another track. It reminded me of the sociologist Erving Goffman's important insights on ritualized "face-work," whereby we strive to maintain our own face as well as the face of others. This is a pervasive ritual in everyday life. Many social interactions, like the one I described at the Y, are layered with the harmless untruths of reciprocal flattery.

And, again, this is a good thing. Most of us welcome these small, flattering untruths about ourselves and are more than happy to offer such untruths to others. Indeed, what a harsh world it would be without such reciprocal, face-saving exchanges.

I went down a third track, this one having to do with puns. Today, unlike in Shakespeare's time, punning has a dubious reputation. Certainly, people who overuse puns without filtering the good from the bad and who interrupt the flow of a conversation to include a pun, even when the social situation is too serious for such humor, contribute to this sense. But if you want to find the welcome, apt use of puns, look to Shakespeare and his command of punning. Sonnet #138 is a good example.

Here is the whole sonnet:

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not to have years told.

Therefore I lie with her and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Everything sounds better with a good sonnet on it.