The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 23

That is Shakespeare's mature judgement of Lord Herbert's betrayal.

The third mention of this sonnet-story in a play is later still: it is in "Twelfth Night." The Duke, as we have seen, is an incarnation of Shakespeare himself, and, indeed, the finest incarnation we have of his temperament. In the fourth scene of the first act he sends Viola to plead his cause for him with Olivia, much in the same way, no doubt, as Shakespeare sent Pembroke to Miss Fitton. The whole scene deserves careful reading.

"Cesario, Thou know'st no less but all; I have unclasp'd To thee the book even of my secret soul: Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her Be not denied access, stand at her doors, And tell them, there thy fixed foot shall grow Till thou have audience.

_Vio_. Sure, my n.o.ble lord, If she be so abandon'd to her sorrow As it is spoke, she never will admit me.

_Duke_. Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds Rather than make unprofited return.

_Vio_. Say I do speak with her, my lord, what then?

_Duke_. O, then unfold the pa.s.sion of my love, Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith: It shall become thee well to act my woes; _She will attend it better in thy youth Than in a nuncio's of more grave aspect._

_Vio_. I think not so, my lord.

_Duke_. Dear lad, believe it; For they shall yet belie thy happy years, That say thou art a man: Diana's lip Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe Is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound; And all is semblative a woman's part.

I know thy constellation is right apt For this affair. Some four or five attend him; All if you will; for I myself am best When least in company."

I do not want to find more here than is in the text: the pa.s.sage simply shows that this idea of sending some one to plead his love was constantly in Shakespeare's mind in these years. The curious part of the matter is that he should pick a youth as amba.s.sador, and a youth who is merely his page. He can discover no reason for choosing such a boy as Viola, and so simply a.s.serts that youth will be better attended to, which is certainly not the fact. Lord Herbert's youth was in his mind: but he could not put the truth in the play that when he chose his amba.s.sador he chose him for his high position and personal beauty and charm, and not because of his youth. The whole incident is treated lightly as something of small import; the bitterness in "Much Ado" has died out: "Twelfth Night" was written about 1601, a year or so later than "Much Ado."

I do not want to labour the conclusion I have reached; but it must be admitted that I have found in the plays, and especially in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Much Ado," the same story which is told in the sonnets; a story lugged into the plays, where, indeed, its introduction is a grave fault in art and its treatment too peculiar to be anything but personal. Here in the plays we have, so to speak, three views of the sonnet-story; the first in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," when the betrayal is fresh in Shakespeare's memory and his words are embittered with angry feeling:

"Thou common friend that's without faith or love."

The second view is taken in "Much Ado About Nothing" when the pain of the betrayal has been a little salved by time. Shakespeare now moralizes the occurrence. He shows us how it would be looked upon by a philosopher (for that is what the lover, Claudio, is in regard to his betrayal) and by a soldier and man of the world, Bened.i.c.k, and by a Prince.

Shakespeare selects the prince to give effect to the view that the fault is in the transgressor and not in the man who trusts. The many-sided treatment of the story shows all the stages through which Shakespeare's mind moved, and the result is to me a more complete confession than is to be found in the sonnets. Finally the story is touched upon in "Twelfth Night," when the betrayal has faded into oblivion, but the poet lets out the fact that his amba.s.sador was a youth, and the reason he gives for this is plainly insufficient. If after these three recitals any one can still believe that the sonnet-story is imaginary, he is beyond persuasion by argument.

CHAPTER IV. THE SONNETS: PART II.

Now that we have found the story of the sonnets repeated three times in the plays, it may be worth our while to see if we can discover in the plays anything that throws light upon the circ.u.mstances or personages of this curious triangular drama. At the outset, I must admit that save in these three plays I can find no mention whatever of Shakespeare's betrayer, Lord Herbert. He was "a false friend," the plays tell us, a "common friend without faith or love," "a friend of an ill fashion"; young, too, yet trusted; but beyond this summary superficial characterization there is silence. _Me judice_ Lord Herbert made no deep or peculiar impression on Shakespeare; an opinion calculated to give pause to the scandal-mongers. For there can be no doubt whatever that Shakespeare's love, Mistress Fitton, the "dark lady" of the sonnet-series from 128 to 152 is to be found again and again in play after play, profoundly modifying the poet's outlook upon life and art.

Before I take in hand this identification of Miss Fitton and her influence upon Shakespeare, let me beg the reader to bear in mind the fact that Shakespeare was a sensualist by nature, a lover, which is as rare a thing as consummate genius. The story of his idolatrous pa.s.sion for Mary Fitton is the story of his life. This is what the commentators and critics. .h.i.therto have failed to appreciate. Let us now get at the facts and see what light the dramas throw upon the chief personage of the story, Mistress Fitton. The study will probably teach us that Shakespeare was the most impa.s.sioned lover and love-poet in all literature.

History tells us that Mary Fitton became a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth in 1595 at the age of seventeen. From a letter addressed by her father to Sir Robert Cecil on January 29th, 1599, it is fairly certain that she had already been married at the age of sixteen; the union was probably not entirely valid, but the mere fact suggests a certain recklessness of character, or overpowering sensuality, or both, and shows that even as a girl Mistress Fitton was no shrinking, timid, modest maiden. Wrapped in a horseman's cloak she used to leave the Palace at night to meet her lover, Lord William Herbert. Though twice married, she had an illegitimate child by Herbert, and two later by Sir Richard Leveson.

This extraordinary woman is undoubtedly the sort of woman Shakespeare depicted as the "dark lady" of the sonnets. Nearly every sonnet of the twenty-six devoted to his mistress contains some accusation against her; and all these charges are manifestly directed against one and the same woman. First of all she is described in sonnet 131 as "tyrannous"; then in sonnet 133 as "faithless"; in sonnet 137 as "the bay where all men ride ... the wide world's commonplace"; in sonnet 138 as "false"; in 139, she is "coquettish"; 140, "proud"; "false to the bonds of love"; "black as h.e.l.l... dark as night"--in both looks and character; "full of foul faults "; "cruel"; "unworthy," but of "powerful" personality; "unkind--inconstant... unfaithful... forsworn."

Now, the first question is: Can we find this "dark lady" of the sonnets in the plays? The sonnets tell us she was of pale complexion with black eyes and hair; do the plays bear out this description? And if they do bear it out do they throw any new light upon Miss Fitton's character?

Did Miss Fitton seem proud and inconstant, tyrannous and wanton, to Shakespeare when he first met her, and before she knew Lord Herbert?

The earliest mention of the poet's mistress in the plays is to be found, I think, in "Romeo and Juliet." "Romeo and Juliet" is dated by Mr.

Furnival 1591-1593; it was first mentioned in 1595 by Meres; first published in 1597. I think in its present form it must be taken to date from 1597. Romeo, who as we have already seen, is an incarnation of Shakespeare, is presented to us in the very first scene as in love with one Rosaline. This in itself tells me nothing; but the proof that Shakespeare stands in intimate relation to the girl called Rosaline comes later, and so the first introductory words have a certain significance for me. Romeo himself tells us that "she hath Dian's wit,"

one of Shakespeare's favourite comparisons for his love, and speaks of her chast.i.ty, or rather of her unapproachableness; he goes on:

"O she is rich in beauty, only poor That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store."

which reminds us curiously of the first sonnets. In the second scene Benvolio invites Romeo to the feast of Capulet, where his love, "the fair Rosaline," is supping, and adds:

"Compare her face with some that I shall shew, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow."

Romeo replies that there is none fairer than his love, and Benvolio retorts:

"Tut! You saw her fair, none else being by."

This bantering is most pointed if we a.s.sume that Rosaline was dark rather than fair.

In the second act Mercutio comes upon the scene, and, mocking Romeo's melancholy and pa.s.sion, cries:

"I conjure thee, by Rosaline's bright eyes, By her high forehead and her scarlet lip...."

This description surprises me. Shakespeare rarely uses such physical portraiture of his personages, and Mercutio is a side of Shakespeare himself; a character all compact of wit and talkativeness, a character wholly invented by the poet.

A little later my suspicion is confirmed. In the fourth scene of the second act Mercutio talks to Benvolio about Romeo; they both wonder where he is, and Mercutio says:

"Ah, that same pale-hearted wench, that Rosaline, Torments him so that he will sure run mad."

And again, a moment later, Mercutio laughs at Romeo as already dead, "stabbed with a white wench's black eye." Now, here is confirmation of my suspicion. It is most unusual for Shakespeare to give the physical peculiarities of any of his characters; no one knows how Romeo looked, or Juliet or even Hamlet or Ophelia; and here he repeats the description.

The only other examples we have as yet found in Shakespeare of such physical portraiture is the sketching of Falstaff in "Henry IV." and the snapshot of Master Slender in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," as a "little wee face, with a little yellow beard,--a cane-coloured beard." Both these photographs, as we noticed at the time, were very significant, and Slender's extraordinarily significant by reason of its striking and peculiar realism. Though an insignificant character, Slender is photographed for us by Shakespeare's contempt and hatred, just as this Rosaline is photographed by his pa.s.sionate love, photographed again and again.

Shakespeare's usual way of describing the physical appearance of a man or woman, when he allowed himself to do it at all, which was seldom, was what one might call the ideal or conventional way. A good example is to be found in Hamlet's description of his father; he is speaking to his mother:

"Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill."

In the special case I am considering Rosaline is less even than a secondary character; she is not a personage in the play at all. She is merely mentioned casually by Benvolio and then by Mercutio, and even Mercutio is not the protagonist; yet his mention of her is strikingly detailed, astonishingly realistic, in spite of its off-hand brevity. We have a photographic snapshot, so to speak, of this girl: she "torments"

Romeo; she is "hard-hearted"; a "white wench" with "black eyes"; twice in four lines she is called now "pale," now "white"--plainly her complexion had no red in it, and was in startling contrast to her black eyes and hair. Manifestly this picture is taken from life, and it is just as manifestly the portrait of the "dark lady" of the sonnets.

As if to make a.s.surance doubly sure, there is another description of this same Rosaline in another play, so detailed and striking, composed as it is of contrasting and startling peculiarities that I can only wonder that its full significance has not been appreciated ages ago. To have missed its meaning only proves that men do not read Shakespeare with love's fine wit.

The repet.i.tion of the portrait is fortunate for another reason: it tells us when the love story took place. The allusion to the "dark lady" in "Romeo and Juliet" is difficult to date exactly; the next mention of her in a play can be fixed in time with some precision. "Love's Labour's Lost" was revised by Shakespeare for production at Court during the Christmas festivities of 1597. When the quarto was published in 1598 it bore on its t.i.tle-page the words, "A pleasant conceited comedy called 'Love's Labour's Lost.' As it was presented before Her Highnes this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented By W. Shakespeare." It is in the revised part that we find Shakespeare introducing his dark love again, and this time, too, curiously enough, under the name of Rosaline.

Evidently he enjoyed the mere music of the word. Biron is an incarnation of Shakespeare himself, as we have already seen, and the meeting of Biron and his love, Rosaline, in the play is extremely interesting for us as Shakespeare in this revised production, one would think, would wish to ingratiate himself with his love, more especially as she would probably be present when the play was produced. Rosaline is made to praise Biron, before he appears, as a merry man and a most excellent talker; but when they meet they simply indulge in a tourney of wit, in which Rosaline more than holds her own, showing indeed astounding self-a.s.surance, spiced with a little contempt of Biron; "hard-hearted"

Mercutio called it. Every word deserves to be weighed:

"_Biron_. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

_Ros_. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

_Biron_. I know you did.

_Ros_. How needless was it, then, to ask the question!

_Biron_. You must not be so quick.

_Ros_. 'Tis long of you that spur me with such questions.

_Biron_. Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire.