Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“And, after all, what is a lie? ’T is but The truth in masquerade;”
- Source
- Don Juan — Canto XI
- Date
- 1823
Meaning of “And, after all, what is a lie? ’T…”
Byron’s narrator jokingly blurs truth and falsehood as part of a satirical attack on how historians, politicians and storytellers shape facts through presentation.
Where does it come from?
Don Juan, Canto XI, stanza XXXVII, represented by the Wikisource canto transcription. “And, after all, what is a lie?” begins Byron’s comic narrator’s satire about historians, heroes, lawyers, poetry and prophecy mixing fact with presentation. It is deliberately ironic poetic narration, not a serious universal definition of lying.
