by Oscar Wilde
In curled knots man’s thought to hold,
and her shoulders like “white doves perching.”81 She was, as King James said to her lover, Lord Mountjoy, “a fair woman with a black soul.”82 As for Mary Fitton, we know that she was unmarried in 1601, the time when her amour with Lord Pembroke was discovered, and besides, any theories that connected Lord Pembroke with the Sonnets were, as Cyril Graham had shewn, put entirely out of court by the fact that Lord Pembroke did not come to London till they had been actually written and read by Shakespeare to his friends.
It was not, however, her name that interested me. I was content to hold with Professor Dowden that “To the eyes of no diver among the wrecks of time will that curious talisman gleam.”83 What I wanted to discover was the nature of her influence over Shakespeare, as well as the characteristics of her personality. Two things were certain: she was much older than the poet, and the fascination that she exercised over him was at first purely intellectual. He began by feeling no physical passion for her. “I do not love thee with mine eyes,” he says:
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone.84
He did not even think her beautiful:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.85
He has his moments of loathing for her, for, not content with enslaving the soul of Shakespeare, she seems to have sought to snare the senses of Willie Hughes. Then Shakespeare cries aloud,
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.86
Then he sees her as she really is, the “bay where all men ride,” the “wide world’s common place,” the woman who is in the “very refuse” of her evil deeds, and who is “as black as hell, as dark as night.”87 Then it is that he pens that great sonnet upon Lust (“Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame”), of which Mr. Theodore Watts says rightly that it is the greatest sonnet ever written.88 And it is then, also, that he offers to mortgage his very life and genius to her if she will but restore to him that “sweetest friend” of whom she had robbed him.
To compass this end he abandons himself to her, feigns to be full of an absorbing and sensuous passion of possession, forges false words of love, lies to her, and tells her that he lies.
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly express’d;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.89
Rather than suffer his friend to be treacherous to him, he will himself be treacherous to his friend. To shield his purity, he will himself be vile. He knew the weakness of the boy-actor’s nature, his susceptibility to praise, his inordinate love of admiration, and deliberately set himself to fascinate the woman who had come between them.
It is never with impunity that one’s lips say Love’s Litany. Words have their mystical power over the soul, and form can create the feeling from which it should have sprung. Sincerity itself, the ardent, momentary sincerity of the artist, is often the unconscious result of style, and in the case of those rare temperaments that are exquisitely susceptible to the influences of language, the use of certain phrases and modes of expression can stir the very pulse of passion, can send the red blood coursing through the veins, and can transform into a strange sensuous energy what in its origin had been mere aesthetic impulse, and desire of art. So, at least, it seems to have been with Shakespeare. He begins by pretending to love, wears a lover’s apparel and has a lover’s words upon his lips. What does it matter? It is only acting, only a comedy in real life. Suddenly he finds that what his tongue had spoken his soul had listened to, and that the raiment that he had put on for disguise is a plague-stricken and poisonous thing that eats into his flesh, and that he cannot throw away. Then comes Desire, with its many maladies, and Lust that makes one love all that one loathes, and Shame, with its ashen face and secret smile. He is enthralled by this dark woman, is for a season separated from his friend, and becomes the “vassal-wretch”90 of one whom he knows to be evil and perverse and unworthy of his love, as of the love of Willie Hughes. “O, from what power,” he says,
hast thou this powerful might,
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness does not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantise of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?91
He is keenly conscious of his own degradation, and finally, realising that his genius is nothing to her compared to the physical beauty of the young actor, he cuts with a quick knife the bond that binds him to her, and in this bitter sonnet bids her farewell:
In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;
In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjur’d most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost:
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see;
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjur’d I,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie!92
His attitude towards Willie Hughes in the whole matter shews at once the fervour and the self-abnegation of the great love he bore him. There is a poignant touch of pathos in the close of this sonnet:
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman’s son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forc’d to break a two-fold truth,—
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.93
But here he makes it manifest that his forgiveness was full and complete:
No more be griev’d at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorising thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,—
Thy adverse party is thy advocate,—
/> And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That I an accessary needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.94
Shortly afterwards Shakespeare left London for Stratford (Sonnets XLIII-LII), and when he returned Willie Hughes seems to have grown tired of the woman who for a little time had fascinated him. Her name is never mentioned again in the Sonnets, nor is there any allusion made to her. She had passed out of their lives.
But who was she? And, even if her name has not come down to us, were there any allusions to her in contemporary literature? It seems to me that although better educated than most of the women of her time, she was not nobly born, but was probably the profligate wife of some old and wealthy citizen. We know that women of this class, which was then first rising into social prominence, were strangely fascinated by the new art of stage playing. They were to be found almost every afternoon at the theatre, when dramatic performances were being given, and “The Actors’ Remonstrance” is eloquent on the subject of their amours with the young actors.95
Cranley in his “Amanda” tells us of one who loved to mimic the actor’s disguises, appearing one day “embroidered, laced, perfumed, in glittering show … as brave as any Countess,” and the next day, “all in mourning, black and sad,” now in the grey cloak of a country wench, and now “in the neat habit of a citizen.”96 She was a curious woman, “more changeable and wavering than the moon,” and the books that she loved to read were Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis,” Beaumont’s “Salmacis and Hermaphroditus,” amorous pamphlets, and “songs of love and sonnets exquisite.”97 These sonnets, that were to her the “bookes of her devotion,” were surely none other but Shakespeare’s own, for the whole description reads like the portrait of the woman who fell in love with Willie Hughes, and, lest we should have any doubt on the subject, Cranley, borrowing Shakespeare’s play on words, tells us that, in her “Proteus-like strange shapes,” she is one who
Changes hews with the chameleon.98
Manningham’s Table-book, also, contains a clear allusion to the same story. Manningham was a student at the Middle Temple with Sir Thomas Overbury and Edmund Curie, whose chambers he seems to have shared; and his Diary is still preserved among the Harleian MSS. at the British Museum, a small duodecimo book written in a fair and tolerably legible hand, and containing many unpublished anecdotes about Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Spenser, Ben Jonson and others. The dates, which are inserted with much care, extend from January 1600-1 to April 1603, and under the heading “March 13, 1601,” Manningham tells us that he heard from a member of Shakespeare’s company that a certain citizen’s wife being at the Globe Theatre one afternoon, fell in love with one of the actors, and “grew so farre in liking with him, that before shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that night unto hir,” but that Shakespeare “overhearing their conclusion” anticipated his friend and came first to the lady’s house, “went before” and “was entertained,” as Manningham puts it, with some added looseness of speech which it is unnecessary to quote.99
It seemed to me that we had here a common and distorted version of the story that is revealed to us in the Sonnets, the story of the dark woman’s love for Willie Hughes, and Shakespeare’s mad attempt to make her love him in his friend’s stead. It was not, of course, necessary to accept it as absolutely true in every detail. According to Manningham’s informant, for instance, the name of the actor in question was not Willie Hughes, but Richard Burbage. Tavern gossip, however, is proverbially inaccurate, and Burbage was, no doubt, dragged into the story to give point to the foolish jest about William the Conqueror and Richard the Third, with which the entry in Manningham’s Diary ends. Burbage was our first great tragic actor, but it needed all his genius to counterbalance the physical defects of low stature and corpulent figure under which he laboured, and he was not the sort of man who would have fascinated the dark woman of the Sonnets, or would have cared to be fascinated by her. There was no doubt that Willie Hughes was referred to, and the private diary of a young law student of the time thus curiously corroborated Cyril Graham’s wonderful guess at the secret of Shakespeare’s great romance. Indeed, when taken in conjunction with “Amanda,” Manningham’s Table book seemed to me to be an extremely strong link in the chain of evidence, and to place the new interpretation of the Sonnets on something like a secure historic basis, the fact that Cranley’s poem was not published till after Shakespeare’s death being really rather in favour of this view, as it was not likely that he would have ventured during the lifetime of the great dramatist to revive the memory of this tragic and bitter story.
This passion for the dark lady also enabled me to fix with still greater certainty the date of the Sonnets. From internal evidence, from the characteristics of language, style, and the like, it was evident that they belonged to Shakespeare’s early period, the period of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “Venus and Adonis.” With the play, indeed, they are intimately connected. They display the same delicate euphuism, the same delight in fanciful phrase and curious expression, the artistic wilfulness and studied graces of the same “fair tongue, conceit’s expositor.”100 Rosaline, the
whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes,101
who is born “to make black fair,” and whose “favour turns the fashion of the days,” is the dark lady of the Sonnets who makes black “beauty’s successive heir.”102 In the comedy as well as in the poems we have that half-sensuous philosophy that exalts the judgment of the senses “above all slower, more toilsome means of knowledge,” and Berowne is perhaps, as Mr. Pater suggests, a reflex of Shakespeare himself “when he has just become able to stand aside from and estimate the first period of his poetry.”103
Now though “Love’s Labour’s Lost” was not published till 1598, when it was brought out “newlie corrected and augmented” by Cuthbert Burby, there is no doubt that it was written and produced on the stage at a much earlier date, probably, as Professor Dowden points out, in 1588–9. If this be so, it is clear that Shakespeare’s first meeting with Willie Hughes must have been in 1585, and it is just possible that this young actor may, after all, have been in his boyhood the musician of Lord Essex.
It is clear, at any rate, that Shakespeare’s love for the dark lady must have passed away before 1594. In this year there appeared, under the editorship of Hadrian Dorell, that fascinating poem, or series of poems, “Willobie his Avisa,” which is described by Mr. Swinburne as the one contemporary book which has been supposed to throw any direct or indirect light on the mystic matter of the Sonnets.104 In it we learn how a young gentleman of St. John’s College, Oxford, by name Henry Willobie, fell in love with a woman so “fair and chaste” that he called her Avisa, either because such beauty as hers had never been seen, or because she fled like a bird from the snare of his passion, and spread her wings for flight when he ventured but to touch her hand. Anxious to win his mistress he consults his familiar friend W. S., “who not long before had tried the curtesy of the like passion, and was now newly recovered of the like infection.”105 Shakespeare encourages him in the siege that he is laying to the Castle of Beauty, telling him that every woman is to be wooed, and every woman to be won; views this “loving comedy” from far off, in order to see “whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor than it did for the old player,” and “enlargeth the wound with the sharpe razor of a willing conceit,” feeling the purely aesthetic interest of the artist in the moods and emotions of others.106 It is unnecessary, however, to enter more fully into this curious passage in Shakespeare’s life, as all that I wanted to point out was that in 1594 he had been cured of his infatuation for the dark lady, and had already been acquainted for at least three years with Willie Hughes.
My whole scheme of the Sonnets was now complete, and, by placing those that refer to
the dark lady in their proper order and position, I saw the perfect unity and completeness of the whole. The drama—for indeed they formed a drama and a soul’s tragedy of fiery passion and of noble thought—is divided into four scenes or acts. In the first of these (Sonnets I-XXXII) Shakespeare invites Willie Hughes to go upon the stage as an actor, and to put to the service of Art his wonderful physical beauty, and his exquisite grace of youth, before passion has robbed him of the one, and time taken from him the other. Willie Hughes, after a time, consents to be a player in Shakespeare’s company, and soon becomes the very centre and keynote of his inspiration. Suddenly, in one red-rose July (Sonnets XXXIII-LII, LXI, and CXXVII-CLII) there comes to the Globe Theatre a dark woman with wonderful eyes, who falls passionately in love with Willie Hughes. Shakespeare, sick with the malady of jealousy, and made mad by many doubts and fears, tries to fascinate the woman who had come between him and his friend. The love, that is at first feigned, becomes real, and he finds himself enthralled and dominated by a woman whom he knows to be evil and unworthy. To her the genius of a man is as nothing compared to a boy’s beauty. Willie Hughes becomes for a time her slave and the toy of her fancy, and the second act ends with Shakespeare’s departure from London. In the third act her influence has passed away. Shakespeare returns to London, and renews his friendship with Willie Hughes, to whom he promises immortality in his plays. Marlowe, hearing of the wonder and grace of the young actor, lures him away from the Globe Theatre to play Gaveston in the tragedy of “Edward II,” and for the second time Shakespeare is separated from his friend. The last act (Sonnets C-CXXVI) tells us of the return of Willie Hughes to Shakespeare’s company. Evil rumour had now stained the white purity of his name, but Shakespeare’s love still endures and is perfect. Of the mystery of this love, and of the mystery of passion, we are told strange and marvellous things, and the Sonnets conclude with an envoi of twelve lines, whose motive is the triumph of Beauty over Time, and of Death over Beauty.
And what had been the end of him who had been so dear to the soul of Shakespeare, and who by his presence and passion had given reality to Shakespeare’s art? When the Civil War broke out, the English actors took the side of their king, and many of them, like Robinson foully slain by Major Harrison at the taking of Basing House, laid down their lives in the king’s service.107 Perhaps on the trampled heath of Marston, or on the bleak hills of Naseby, the dead body of Willie Hughes had been found by some of the rough peasants of the district, his gold hair “dabbled with blood,” and his breast pierced with many wounds. Or it may be that the Plague, which was very frequent in London at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was indeed regarded by many of the Christians as a judgment sent on the city for its love of “vaine plaies and idolatrous shewes,”108 had touched the lad while he was acting, and he had crept home to his lodging to die there alone, Shakespeare being far away at Stratford, and those who had flocked in such numbers to see him, the “gazers” whom, as the Sonnets tell us, he had “led astray,” being too much afraid of contagion to come near him.109 A story of this kind was current at the time about a young actor, and was made much use of by the Puritans in their attempts to stifle the free development of the English Renaissance. Yet, surely, had this actor been Willie Hughes, tidings of his tragic death would have been speedily brought to Shakespeare as he lay dreaming under the mulberry tree in his garden at New Place,110 and in an elegy as sweet as that written by Milton on Edward King,111 he would have mourned for the lad who had brought such joy and sorrow into his life, and whose connection with his art had been of so vital and intimate a character. Something made me feel certain that Willie Hughes had survived Shakespeare, and had fulfilled in some measure the high prophecies the poet had made about him, and one evening the true secret of his end flashed across me.
