I 
 
 MAlAj 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 /Criticism is the mission of the prophet*. 
 ^^ the act of Paul announcing to a market- 
 crowd of heedless and profane foreigners, " an 
 unknown God." In this spirit I called my first 
 critical work, The Man Shakespeare — Ecce 
 Homo ! 
 
 Criticism is an act of worship, a dedication of 
 the spirit in love and an Interpretation of the 
 divine, the result of Intimate communion of soul. 
 As such an interpretation I put forth The Women 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 I had thought of calling it The Woman Shake- 
 speare; for the woman a man loves Is the Ideal 
 in himself; the veiled goddess who corresponds 
 to all the desires, conscious and unconscious, of his 
 I nature as lock to key, as light to the eye. These 
 ijare correlatives and suppose and complete each 
 t'other. To find fault therefore with the woman 
 pne loves Is to blame oneself. He alone fails 
 to win her who fails to possess himself: she was 
 .ll ix 
 
Introduction 
 
 his from the beginning if he be all he might be: 
 failure here even in degree is tragic. 
 
 It would only be necessary then to reproduce 
 faithfully the portrait Shakespeare has given of 
 his mistress in order to describe him to the life 
 for all those who have eyes to see. This book, 
 as I conceived it, is in essence complementary to 
 The Man Shakespeare. Here again Shake- 
 speare will reveal himself as the gentle, irresolute, 
 meditative poet-thinker-lover we learned to know 
 in Orsino-Hamlet-Antony, an aristocrat of most 
 delicate sensibilities and sympathetic humour 
 whose chief defects are snobbishness and over- 
 powering sensuality, if indeed this latter quality 
 is not to be reckoned as a virtue in an artist or 
 at least as an endowment. But the public would 
 probably have misunderstood the title The 
 Woman Shakespeare, and so I changed it to The 
 Women of Shakespeare in order also to mention 
 and describe all the women who in any conspicu- 
 ous degree entered Into the poet's life or at least 
 affected his art. There were four of them: his 
 mother, his wife, his mistress and his daughter. 
 
 His jealous scolding shrew wife, who was eight 
 years his senior, overshadowed, as we shall see 
 all his early manhood, and left her bitter mark 
 on most of his youthful work. 
 
Introduction 
 
 We have an extraordinary, vivid spirit-photo- 
 graph of her, so to speak, as Adriana in the 
 Comedy of Errors: her furious temper forces it- 
 self to view again where ill-temper is utterly out 
 of place in the raging, raving Constance of King 
 John, and again in Katharine in The Taming of 
 the Shrew. 
 
 The shadow cast by his bitter nagging wife was 
 exorcised by the advent in 1596-7 of that ''queen 
 of Beauty " who changed the world for Shake- 
 speare, and was, I believe, the maid-of-honour, 
 Mary Fitton. 
 
 We have a realistic snapshot of her in Rosaline 
 in Romeo and Juliet, a superb photograph of her 
 as Rosaline again in Lovers Labour's Lost; ideal- 
 istic happy impressions of her in Julia, Juliet, 
 Portia, Beatrice, and Rosalind; passionate full- 
 length- pictures of her in the Sonnets, and again 
 as " false Cressid," and finally a triumphant liv- 
 ing, breathing portrait of her in Cleopatra — a 
 world's masterpiece. Lady Macbeth is a mere 
 sketch of her imperious strength and self will: 
 Goneril a slight copy of Lady Macbeth, with lust 
 added. 
 
 This woman dominated all Shakespeare's ma- 
 turity from 1597 to 1608, and changed him, as 
 I have said elsewhere, from a light-hearted writer 
 
Introduction 
 
 of comedies, histories and songs into the greatest 
 man who has left record of himself in literature, 
 the author of half-a-dozen masterpieces, whose 
 names have become tragic symbols in the con- 
 sciousness of humanity. 
 
 In 1608 Mary Fitton married for the second 
 time and left the Court and Shakespeare for 
 ever. Her desertion, and if you will, the pas- 
 sionate devotion of twelve years to her earthy- 
 coarse service had broken down Shakespeare's 
 health. In 1608, too, his mother died, and he 
 returned for a year or so to village Stratford to 
 recover some measure of health and hope. 
 
 He has given us a portrait of his mother in Vo- 
 lumnia, the mother of Coriolanus; has told us in 
 the play that she was the confidante of his youth : 
 that he owed her more than any other man owed 
 his mother: she was always to him " the noblest 
 mother of the world." 
 
 Shakespeare spent a good part of the six or 
 seven remaining years of his life in Stratford: 
 he was nursed out of weakness and despair and 
 coaxed back to "fortitude" by his .younger 
 daughter Judith, who was an "angel" to him; 
 her modesty, purity and tenderness made a pro- 
 found impression on the passion-worn poet. 
 
 He has left us portraits of her in Marina, Prr- 
 xii 
 
Introduction 
 
 dita and Miranda — soul-sketches which show his 
 idealizing tendency and his exquisite poetic gift, 
 and which also discover in their slightness and 
 spirituality, his alarming physical weakness. 
 
 His increasing frailty induced him, he tells us, 
 to hasten by a year the writing of The Tempest, 
 his testament and legacy, as he meant it to be, 
 to the English people : a masterpiece which con- 
 tains the divinest poetry and some of the noblest 
 teaching in the language. 
 
 The immortal significance of Shakespeare's 
 life to me, the history of his soul is the story of 
 his love for the imperious gypsy-wanton Mary 
 Fitton. Till he met her at thirty-two he knew 
 little of life and less of women: through her he 
 came to knowledge of both and..to jnuch self- 
 knowledge. There is nothing in all literature 
 more enthralling, nothing more instructive than 
 the flame-like growth of Shakespeare's soul in the 
 " madding fever '^ of passion. 
 
 The conception of passion as a forcing-house 
 of talent is new to literature and altogether for- 
 eign to the English mind; it is probably set forth 
 here for the first time: yet Shakespeare himself 
 is one of the best examples of the truth. When 
 he first met his mistress his desire of her was 
 stronger than his affection : he asked more than he 
 
Introduction 
 
 g ave, an d naturally suffered a martyrdom. But 
 there was a fount of love In him and for twelve 
 years he lived intensely, now In the seventh 
 heaven of delight, now In the lowest hell of jeaj- 
 ousy, rage and humiliation. All the experiences 
 of joy and sorrow he turned to soul-profit: pain 
 taught^jnm pity [Joy taught him lovingklndness 
 and goodwlllj sufferings syjiipathy; and If he had 
 had a little more faith^ faith In himself or In his 
 love, he would have wo^n to his heart's desire, and 
 written the first love-song of the modern world.. 
 This was not to be: he saw that he had failed, 
 fallen short of the highest and In this wild re- 
 morseful mood, gave us his own epitaph by the 
 mouth of Wolsey In Henry VIII.: 
 
 ... all my glories 
 In that one woman I have lost for ever: 
 No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours, 
 Or gild again the noble troops that waited 
 Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell; 
 I am a poor fall'n man ... 
 
 But this Is not the whole truth about Shake- 
 speare, not even the best part of the truth. Again 
 and again, especially In Hamlet and In the Son- 
 nets he shows an astonishing preoccupation about 
 his epitaph; about what will be said of him after 
 he has left the stage and passed Into the silenre. 
 
 xiv 
 
Introduction 
 
 He need have had no anxiety; th^** poor fallen 
 man " gave us The Tempest, and his own tri- 
 umphant words In Antony and Cleopatra shall 
 live In everlasting memory of him : 
 
 'A rarer spirit never 
 Did steer humanity . . . 
 
 For all deductions made, this Shakespeare ac- 
 complished more than any other man, went 
 deeper Into hell and rose higher Into heaven than 
 any other mortal, and what he was and how" he 
 suffered and enjoyed he has told us In great pic- 
 tures flamed out on the black walls of our earth- 
 prison for ever, and his joy of living and his " hell 
 of time " have become to us a pillar of cloud by 
 day, and a pillar of fire by night to warn and to 
 guide. 
 
 I have tried to read the entrancing story with 
 " love's fine wit," and to set It all down with af- 
 fectionate solicitude, moved only by that spirit of 
 truth which reveals and renews like sunlight. 
 
 Like a botanist, I have put the whole plant to 
 view: flower and fruit, leaves and stalk and roots. 
 Some common clay still clings to the white nerve- 
 fibres and exhales a faint odour of mortality: but 
 this is transmuted in the flower Into perfume, and 
 
Introdiictiori 
 
 the fruit Is Incomparable, the finest from the Tree 
 of Life. 
 
 This book not only rounds out my work on 
 Shakespeare, but It establishes for the first time 
 his right to be considered the author of half a 
 dozen plays or portions of plays which have been 
 ascribed to other hands, known and unknown, by 
 all the commentators. It will be noticed that In 
 many cases it Is my reading of his character and 
 of his life which has enabled me to recognize with 
 certainty the ha'nd of the master. This new 
 proof that my conception of Shakespeare Is In 
 the main correct must surely be conclusive. 
 
 One question and one reproach I shall not 
 escape: I have criticized my critics In my books at 
 some length; taken some pains to place what Is 
 called " the best knowledge of my time " as the 
 dark background of my picture. My friends 
 wonder whether this were wise on my part: 
 '' why lend the unimportant, significance, and give 
 to the ephemeral, length of days?" they ask. 
 My enemies, on the other hand, pretend to be de- 
 lighted — " he cries out, therefore he's hurt," they 
 opine smiling. 
 
 These arguments hardly exhaust the subject. 
 There are, It seems to me, two great traditions 
 on this matter, contradictory traditions: the one 
 
Introduction 
 
 coming from Dante, the other from Shakespeare 
 or even perhaps from a higher source. Dante dis- 
 tributed his enemies conscientiously In this or that 
 circle of Hell, catching them by the hair, as 
 Browning phrased it, and writing their real names 
 in letters of fire on their foreheads for ever. 
 
 Shakespeare Is supposed to have passed over 
 his critics without a word, holding himself god- 
 like above slander and Insult. ' This Idea about 
 Shakespeare Is mistaken. He told the truth, I 
 believe, about Chapman in the Sonnets: praised 
 " the proud full sail of his great verse " while 
 hinting that his heavy learning wanted stronger 
 wings to lift it from the ground: and when he 
 talked of Ajax as " a gouty Briareys ... a pur- 
 blind Argus with a hundred eyes and no sight," 
 I feel sure he was picturing Ben Jonson and 
 thereby answering Jonson's unfair and envious 
 carping with more sincerity than sympathy. 
 
 Shakespeare was kindlier and wiser than 
 Dante : he did not pursue his enemies or nail them 
 up as vermin on some great page to eternal loath- 
 ing; but now and then he did lift the dark Time- 
 curtain and show them to us in their habit as they 
 lived. 
 
 The best modern view of this matter is higher 
 than Dante's or Shakespeare's; curiously enough 
 
 xvii 
 
Introduction 
 
 it nears the Christian position: "go on produc- 
 ing," one says, " like the earth, harvest on har- 
 vest and let your fruits speak for you. Don't 
 waste time and temper answering the fool and 
 the envious: all that is personal and transitory, 
 and the artist should be intent on the enduring." 
 
 That is surely the right temper of soul; but 
 it is hardly fair to the fool and to the envious: 
 they, too, have their place in life, and they supply 
 the necessary realistic details of ugliness and ig- 
 norance — the black shadows — to the picture. 
 
 How far they should be used depends on the 
 nature of the picture, and must be left to the 
 artist. One general rule, however, holds of 
 necessity for the starfinder as for the faultfinder: 
 in measure as the lights are high, the shadows 
 will be dark. 
 
 If, indeed, the artist is one of God's spies, and 
 has given himself in all reverence to what Cole- 
 ridge called " the awful task " of unveiling the 
 mystery of things with a passionate determination 
 to discover and reveal the truth at any cost, he 
 must expect the pillory, at least: he will be the 
 cockshy of journalists and professors for a sea- 
 son amid the pleased laughter of the crowd. If 
 he takes any hurt from the mouldy cabbages of 
 pedantry or the rotten eggs of envy, he should 
 
 xvlii 
 
Introduction 
 
 console himself wi<"h the knowledge that his pain 
 will be in proportion to his own ignorance and 
 malice. It is not given to man to injure the im- 
 mortal. 
 
 Frank Harris. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 TAMORA: MARGARET: JOAN OF ARC 
 
 TN his famous Introduction to La Comedie Hu- 
 maine Balzac puts his finger on the weakest 
 spot In English literature. He Is astonished that 
 Scott, who paints men so bravely and has left 
 such excelling portraits as Balfour of Burleigh 
 and Caleb Balderstone should have painted 
 women so feebly — presenting them as the 
 skimmed milk, so to speak, of humanity. 
 
 He explains the fact by the upas-like influence 
 of Puritanism which he compares to its disad- 
 vantage with Catholicism. Balzac might have 
 gone a step farther back, one fancies, and traced 
 the peculiarities of the creed to racial character- 
 istics. Tacitus was the first to notice the extraor- 
 dinary chastity of the Germanic peoples; he was 
 surprised by the value they put upon this virtue. 
 It is this hardness in the German paste, this dis- 
 like to yield to " languishing love " which is re- 
 sponsible, I imagine, for the paucity and poverty 
 
 1 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 of women-portraits in German and English liter- 
 ature. The most representative English novel, 
 and one of the greatest, Robinson Crusoe, has no 
 love in it whatever; it is of adventurous daring 
 and practical details all compact, and one can 
 hardly think of our typical English heroines, the 
 blameless, bloodless Eves, Amelias, Sophies, 
 Amys, and Maggies without a smile. Becky 
 Sharp even is sacrificed to the author's puritan- 
 ism; the green-eyed courtesan is depicted without 
 a soul and so remains a superb caricature. In 
 no other literature would poets like Milton, 
 Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge have passed 
 through life without leaving a single woman's 
 portrait worth remembering. 
 
 It is curious, too, that only the greatest in Ger- 
 man literature has painted a woman with any in- 
 timate understanding: Goethe's Gretchen is a 
 masterpiece, and his Mignon is at least a fine at- 
 tempt to realize a still higher ideal. It will be 
 of interest to consider what Shakespeare has done 
 in this field, and judge whether his portraits of 
 women are worthy to rank with Manon Lescaut, 
 and Madame Bovary, Gretchen, and Francesca. 
 Our home critics, of course, put him above com- 
 pare, and will rattle you off the names of a 
 dozen Rosalinds, Perditas and Imogens with end- 
 
T amor a: Margaret: Joan of Arc 
 
 less strings of laudatory epithets; but beautiful 
 names cannot always stand for portraits, nor 
 praise for critical appreciation, and It may be 
 worth while once to test the matter scrupulously, 
 for a study of it will certainly throw an Intense 
 light on Shakespeare's mind and growth. 
 
 In the course of these essays It will be seen 
 whether the view of Shakespeare's nature which 
 I have put forth In my book The Man Shake- 
 speare Is corroborated or w^eakened, whether the 
 Incidents of his life which I have accepted as true 
 are further established or thrown Into doubt, and 
 above all It must now become clear whether I am 
 trying to bend stubborn truths to fit a fantastic 
 theory, as my opponents contend, or whether, hav- 
 ing caught a glimpse of the truth or deduced It al- 
 most unconsciously from a thousand facts, I now 
 find on further examination hundreds of other 
 facts springing up on all sides to buttress and 
 confirm It. 
 
 If we can judge Shakespeare at all by his first 
 work, by the Venus and Adonis, It must be ad- 
 mitted that he started life with a most generous 
 endowment of sensuality, and If we are to believe 
 tradition, and all tradition concurs on this point, 
 he was himself, not only handsome and well- 
 shaped, but very gentle and courteous with most 
 
The fVomen of SJiakespeare 
 
 ingratiating manners, likely, therefore, to love 
 women and be loved by them. Because I have 
 made this statement elsewhere, I have been ac- 
 cused of blasphemy and vilification in reputable 
 English journals. Shakespeare's sensuality, it 
 appears, is all of my seeing, a figment of my dis- 
 eased imagining. 
 
 One rubs one's eyes and wonders if these critics 
 have ever read Venus and Adonis: it is the most 
 passionate love-song in the language; more in- 
 tense even than Marlowe's Hero and Leander; 
 more sensual than the most sensual verse of 
 Swinburne; bare lust is pictured in it with greater 
 detail and keener delight than in any other Eng- 
 lish poem. 
 
 Take the following passage: 
 
 Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey. 
 
 And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth; 
 
 Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey. 
 
 Paying what ransom the insulter willeth; 
 
 Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high, 
 That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry: 
 
 And having felt the sweetness of the spoil 
 
 With blindfold fury she begins to forage; 
 
 Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil. 
 
 And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage. . . . 
 
 Venus and Adonis was immediately popular: 
 it ran through edition after edition, and gave 
 
 4. 
 
T amor a: Margaret: ^oan oj Arc 
 
 Shakespeare position as a poet. Its astonishing 
 success serves to depict the age. " It was the joy 
 of young lovers," we are told: " Pupillus " in 
 The Noble Stranger wanted it *' to court his mis- 
 tress by." * A severer criticism, however, made 
 itself heard: one wished to see Shakespeare's 
 sweet verse with its " heart-throbbing life " ap- 
 plied to "a graver subject": another, like Ga- 
 briel Harvey, turned from the Venus and Adonis 
 m which *' the younger sort take much delight " 
 to Liicrece. 
 
 The curious thing is that Shakespeare's next 
 poem. The Rape of Lucrece, first published in 
 the following year, 1594, though praised at the 
 time as both " sweet and chaste," is every whit 
 as passionately conceived as Venus and Adonis. 
 The rape is imagined as nakedly in the chaste 
 poem and with the same lingering enjoyment as 
 is shown in the wooing of Venus in the love-song. 
 English critics would be put to it to explain this; 
 but they prefer to believe that a man can outdo 
 all others in picturing sensuality without being 
 himself sensual. It is my " assumption," they 
 
 * Venus and Adonis was like those books which Horace 
 says were to be found under the silk cushions of the Roman 
 ladies: 
 
 Nee non libelli stoici inter sericos 
 
 Jacerc pulvillos amant. 
 
 5 
 
The JVomen of SJiakespeare 
 
 maintain, that the qualities seen in the painting 
 must of necessity exist in the painter. 
 
 Shakespeare called Fcjius and Adonis *' the 
 first heir of my Invention." Professor Herford, 
 who has edited the Ev^ersley edition which I hap- 
 pen to have under my hand at the moment, de- 
 clares that he '' probably meant that It was his 
 first lyrical or narrative poem, and not that It 
 preceded all his plays." I prefer to take Shake- 
 speare's plain words and abide by them. Venus 
 and Adonis was first published In 1593; but may 
 have been written some years before. The real- 
 istic pictures In It of the hare and the horse call 
 up the English country-side very vividly, and If I 
 am not able without reserve to uphold Cole- 
 ridge's belief that Shakespeare wrote It " In the 
 country " before coming to London, still the con- 
 jecture has a good deal to say for Itself. In 
 1590 the first Instalment of The Faerie Queen 
 appeared and Lodge's Glauciis and Silla, which 
 was written In the same six-line stanza as Venus 
 and Adonis with alteration of quatrain and coup- 
 let. It seems to me probable that Shakespeare 
 took the form at least of his poem from Lodge. 
 Rhymed verse was the poetic fashion and Shake- 
 peare used It; but he never moved freely In it, 
 much less as a master calling forth Its latent 
 
 6 
 
Tamora: Margaret: Joan oj Arc 
 
 capacities of music and emphasis. Still Coleridge 
 had reason perhaps to remind us that Venus and 
 Adonis is full of memories of Shakespeare's early 
 life in Stratford. 
 
 I suggested in The Man Shakespeare that this 
 passionate picture of an older woman loving and 
 tempting a " tender boy " contains in it some- 
 thing more than a side-glance at Shakespeare's 
 enforced marriage with an older woman. It 
 seems probable to me that young Shakespeare was 
 not unwilling to excite the sympathy or pity of his 
 high-born London friends with this picture of his 
 misled youth. It explained his untimely marriage 
 and the fact, too, that he had left his wife in 
 Stratford, and would not bring her to London. 
 
 I must just note in passing that neither the lust- 
 ful queen of love nor the chaste matron Lucrece 
 lives for us in Shakespeare's verse with any In- 
 dividual life. The poems are companion pictures 
 of passion and not portraits of women. 
 
 In order to trace Shakespeare's growth from 
 the beginning, I am compelled to consider his 
 earliest works, Titus Andronicus and the First 
 Part of King Henry VI., and again I find myself 
 at variance with the professors. I have given 
 some reasons already for thinking that much of 
 Titus Andronicus was written by Shakespeare; 
 
 7 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 the professors do not agree with me, and the 
 point is hardly worth further debate here; for I 
 hope to handle the question at length some time 
 or other, and for my present purpose it is suffi- 
 cient to remark that Tamora is a mere fiend, and 
 that Lavinia has no nearer relation to woman- 
 hood than her name. 
 
 I have also stated that much of the First Part 
 of Henry VI. is certainly Shakespeare's; in fact, 
 that " he wrote more than we, who have his ma- 
 ture work in mind are inclined to ascribe to him," 
 and this I must now endeavour to prove, for this 
 play marks a moment in Shakespeare's growth 
 and is therefore necessary to my argument, and 
 all the professor-mandarins are here leagued in 
 battle against me. I must, therefore, clear the 
 way a little before I go any further. 
 
 Were there no other reasons for attributing 
 the First Fart of Henry VI. to Shakespeare, I 
 should be inclined to follow the first editors, 
 Hemyng and Condell, who included it with Titus 
 Andronicus in their First Folio of 1623, for I 
 am fain to believe that those two men who played 
 on the same stage with Shakespeare for many 
 years must have known his work intimately. 
 They were honest, too ; scrupulous even, as Eng- 
 lishmen are apt to be, and erred on the right side 
 
 8 
 
T amor a: Margaret: Joan of Arc 
 
 perhaps by refusing to include in the First Folio 
 anything that was not undoubtedly his. They left 
 out at least one play which he had certainly 
 touched up and bettered, The Two Noble Kins- 
 men; but they published nothing that did not in 
 the main belong to him. In case of doubt, there- 
 fore, it will be well to follow their authority. 
 
 A little consideration of the First Part of 
 Henry VI. will show precisely the professors' 
 procedure and what it is worth. " The view 
 that /. Henry VI. was wholly the work of Shake- 
 speare," says Professor Herford, " is now prob- 
 ably extinct In England," though " It is still or- 
 thodox In Germany." He goes on: "The First 
 Part clearly stands apart from the other two 
 ... It contains a far larger mass of utterly un- 
 Shakespearean work."* The professor's drastic- 
 bold statement derives from the fact that Cole- 
 ridge asserted that part of the first scene of the 
 first act of this First Part was not written by 
 Shakespeare, and consequently the professors 
 bettering the hint are all contemptuous in their 
 rejection of " the greater part " of the play. 
 Now we can kick the Germans, they say, and pro- 
 ceed to kick. But all good readers have been 
 compelled to accept as Shakespeare's at least two 
 scenes, the dispute In the Temple Gardens about 
 
 9 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 the roses and the wooing of Margaret by Suf- 
 folk. Mr. Swinburne Insisted that the last battle 
 and death of Talbot was just as undoubtedly 
 Shakespeare's. He went on, however, to cast 
 some doubt on the courtship of Margaret by 
 Suffolk: "This latter. Indeed, full as It Is of 
 natural and vivid grace, may not perhaps be 
 beyond the reach of one or two among the 
 rivals of his (Shakespeare's) earliest years of 
 work." 
 
 ^^^^ow the professors have nothing to do but 
 register these authoritative opinions. Not one 
 of them has ever cast a ray of light on any such 
 disputed point. They are there to teach stu- 
 dents the best that Is known on the subject; but 
 they can hardly be expected to add to the sum 
 ot human knowledge. That requires other and 
 higher qualities than are given to the bookworm. 
 But what are they to do about doubtful pas- 
 sages, It may be asked, when their authorities 
 differ? They should record the difference and 
 leave It at that; but they will obtrude their own 
 limitations; they try to show off and usually 
 come to grief. For example, Professor Her- 
 ford In this dilemma, seeing that the wooing of 
 Margaret Is " so oddly diapered In the last act 
 with the end of Joan; . . ." decides that "it 
 
 10 
 
Tamora: Margaret: Joan of Arc 
 
 has very little title to be considered Shake- 
 speare's work." After much experience of such 
 ex cathedra assertions one Is inclined to say, 
 " Well roared, Bottom," and pay no further 
 heed; for professor echoes professor as shallow 
 sings to shallow; but it Is Imperative to notice 
 an opinion of Swinburne. One word of Swin- 
 burne or Coleridge on such a point is worth all 
 the pronouncements of all the professors since 
 the flood; for the poets have imaginative sym- 
 pathy to guide them and the professors are with- 
 out such light. In this instance, however, the 
 professors parrot Swinburne, though Swinburne 
 Is mistaken, and the motive which misled him Is 
 at hand. If he accepted the wooing of Mar- 
 garet by Suffolk which precedes and follows the 
 scene wherein Joan of Arc Is libelled as never 
 woman was libelled before or since by a poet, he 
 would be almost compelled to ascribe the libel to 
 Shakespeare, and this was too much for his pa- 
 triotism. " That damnable last scene," he says, 
 " at which the gorge rises even to remember It, 
 is in execution as unlike the crudest phase of 
 Shakespeare's style as in conception it is unlike 
 the Idlest birth of his spirit." This Is very 
 strongly put; but sweeping rhetorical statements 
 carry little conviction. Let us bring the matter 
 
 11 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 to proof, and first let us consider the wooing. 
 When Suffolk sees Margaret he cries: 
 
 Oh, fairest beauty, do not fear nor fly! 
 For I will touch thee but with reverent hands; 
 I kiss these fingers for eternal peace. 
 And lay them gently on thy tender side. 
 Who art thou? say, that I may honour thee. 
 
 Surely this Is Shakespeare; young Shakespeare 
 at his best : a moment later Suffolk exclaims : 
 
 Be not offended, nature's miracle, 
 
 and all doubt vanishes; this Is Shakespeare's 
 very voice; no one before him or since wrote like 
 that, and the whole scene Is stamped with the 
 same seal. 
 
 And later (scene v.) when Suffolk goes on to 
 praise Margaret to the king, one cannot but hear 
 Shakespeare's accent, his favourite words, his 
 bookish Illustrations, everything: 
 
 SuF. Tush, my good lord, this superficial tale 
 Is but a preface of her worthy praise; 
 The chief perfections of that lovely dame. 
 Had I sufficient skill to utter them. 
 Would make a volume of enticing lines, 
 Able to ravish any dull conceit: 
 And, which is more, she is not so divine. 
 So full-replete with choice of all delights. 
 But with as humble lowliness of mind 
 She is content to be at your command; 
 Command, I mean, of virtuous chaste intents. 
 To love and honour Henry as her lord. 
 12 
 
Tamora: Margaret: Joan oj Arc 
 
 I have put the two most intimate and perma- 
 nently characteristic lines in italics for the bene- 
 fit of the professors and those who don't know 
 much about Shakespeare; but the whole scene is 
 just as indubitably his in spite of Swinburne. 
 
 Shakespeare's work in this First Fart is not 
 confined to the scenes already mentioned. In my 
 book, The Man Shakespeare^ I state : '* It would 
 be easy to prove that much of what the dying 
 Mortimer says is just as certainly Shakespeare's 
 work as any of the passages referred to by Mr. 
 Swinburne." Now for the proof. 
 
 Act ii. scene 5. Enter Mortimer, brought in a chair, 
 and Gaolers. 
 
 MoR. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age, 
 Let dying Mortimer here rest himself. 
 Even like a man new haled from the rack, 
 So fare my limbs with long imprisonment; 
 And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death, 
 Nestor-like aged in an age of care. 
 Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. 
 These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent. 
 Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent. . . . 
 
 One hears Shakespeare in every word; but if 
 any one can believe that the last two lines were 
 written by any other hand, he is past my helping,* 
 
 * I may be called upon to prove the obvious, and therefore 
 beg any would-be critic to notice that nearly twenty years 
 later Shakespeare makes the dying Antony speak of the 
 "exigent" (Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. scene 12), and 
 
 IS 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 and in Mortimer's very next speech, I hear the 
 master again just as certainly. Mortimer talks 
 of death as " the arbitrator of despairs," and 
 goes on : ^ 
 
 Just death, kind umpire of men's miseries. 
 
 With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence . . . 
 
 The very words remind me of Posthumus and 
 his talk of "the sure physician Death . . . away 
 to liberty." 
 
 A little later Mortimer tells his nephew: 
 
 . . . Thy uncle is removing hence 
 
 As princes do their courts, when they are cloy'd 
 
 With long continuance in a settled place. 
 
 The whole scene Is not only Shakespeare's, 
 but Shakespeare at his most characteristic; a 
 dying man * Is as sure to catch his sympathy as 
 a lover, and he delights In using both as a mouth- 
 piece of his own feelings. 
 
 The more carefully I read this First Part, 
 the more often I find Shakespeare In it. Swln- 
 
 Cleopatra in the very next scene describing Antony's death 
 says, " Our lamp is spent, it's out." 
 
 * Since writing the above I have come upon the fact that 
 this scene is unhistorical: Edmund Mortimer was not impris- 
 oned, and died in high office. Shakespeare took the whole 
 scene from his im,agination ; it is therefore at once more 
 characteristic and more important to us than an incident which 
 he merely describes. 
 
 14 
 
Tamora: Margaret: 'Joan of Arc 
 
 burne was more than justified in ascribing *' the 
 last battle and death of Talbot " to Shakespeare. 
 Practically the whole character of Talbot pro- 
 claims his handiwork. 
 
 In the third scene of the second act, Talbot 
 tells the Countess she has entrapped him in vain: 
 
 No, no, I am but shadow of myself: 
 You are deceived, my substance is not here; 
 For what you see is but the smallest part 
 And least proportion of humanity. . . . 
 
 Here surely Is the cunning of Shakespeare's 
 thought, clad In characteristic phrase. 
 
 Talbot's courteous forglvingness, too, Is just 
 as certainly the gentle, generous Shakespeare's: 
 
 What you have done hath not offended me; 
 Nor other satisfaction do I crave, 
 But only, with your patience, that we may 
 Taste of your wine and see what cates you have; 
 For soldiers' stomachs always serve them well. 
 
 To sum up briefly, there is a good deal of the 
 first act in which I don't hear Shakespeare; but 
 almost from the moment when Talbot comes on 
 the stage in the second act to the very end of the 
 play, I find proof upon proof of Shakespeare's 
 work on nearly every page. In fact, his hand is 
 as plainly to be seen In the last four acts of this 
 First Part, as it Is In the Second or Third Parts: 
 
 15 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Talbot and Mortimer, Margaret and Suffolk 
 are as certainly his painting as the great picture 
 of the gentle saint Henry VI. 
 
 In depicting Margaret, Shakespeare seems to 
 have followed history closely in a dozen differ- 
 ent scenes. There was no doubt a clear tradi- 
 tion of her pride, courage, and high spirit, and 
 these are the qualities he gives her from begin- 
 ning to end, so that she becomes In his pages 
 somewhat hard and wordy and wooden, though 
 the opportunity offered Itself to him to do better. 
 When her young son Edward Is murdered, she 
 could have been pictured as breaking down, could 
 have been made human for us by some touch of 
 despairing sorrow; but no! she rails on with 
 dreadful verbosity through scene after scene 
 and play after play, till we are relieved when she 
 disappears from the stage forever. 
 
 But If Shakespeare copied history closely when 
 painting Margaret, what about Joan of Arc? 
 Does he treat her In the same way? Or must 
 we accept the atrocious libel on her as his? I 
 am afraid we must, for not only Is it embedded 
 in what Is Indubitably his work, but the worst 
 part of It Is just such an Invention as would sug- 
 gest itself to him. The poets are all against me 
 here, so I must give my reasons, must consider 
 
 16 
 
Tamora: Margaret: Joan of Arc 
 
 carefully the whole of this portrait of Joan of 
 Arc If, indeed, portrait It may be called. 
 
 The painting of great characters has this ad- 
 vantage, or disadvantage as the case may be, 
 that every shortcoming of the painter will be re- 
 vealed in the portrait; If the mirror cannot con- 
 tain, or If It distorts the object, its limitations 
 and faults must strike every one. What Shake- 
 speare says of himself in Sonnet 121 : 
 
 .... they that level 
 At my abuses, reckon up their own: 
 
 might well be applied to all great personages, 
 and to none more fitly than to this heroic woman. 
 Shakespeare might have painted the tradi- 
 tional Joan of Arc of Hollnshed as he painted 
 the traditional Margaret, and no one would have 
 been able to deduce much more than youth from 
 his subservience. He began by doing this, then 
 out of patriotism he went on to idealize Talbot, 
 and consequently Is almost compelled to diminish 
 Joan's triumphs; he makes her take Rouen 
 (which was never taken, but opened its gates 
 seventeen years after her death) by a trick be- 
 cause he wants to give Talbot the glory of re- 
 taking it by sheer English courage. He puts 
 down all her successes to witchery and sorcery, 
 as Hollnshed did, and when she Is captured, he 
 
 17 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 not only repeats the usual libel on her that she 
 pretended to be with child by this and that noble 
 in order to prolong her life, but he blackens this j 
 libel by a suggestion made in the first act. When 
 the Dauphin presses her to marry him, Shake- 
 speare makes her half-promise to yield to him 
 and talk of her ''recompense," and this half- 
 promise and the desire of reward deepen the bad 
 impression made by her pretended confessions 
 in the last act. But Shakespeare is not content 
 to prove that the noble French girl is light and 
 common and sordid, he absolutely invents a 
 scene in which she denies her shepherd-father, 
 and asserts that she Is " nobly born " for no rea- 
 son, or rather In defiance of reason; for he has al- 
 ready followed tradition by making Joan in the 
 first act avow her parentage. Here is the astound- 
 ing slander and self-contradiction. In the first act, 
 speaking as the traditional pucelle, Joan says: 
 
 Dauphin, I am by birth a shepherd's daughter. 
 My wit untrain'd by any kind of art. 
 Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleased 
 To shine on my contemptible estate. 
 Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs 
 And to sun's parching heat display'd ray cheeks, 
 God's mother deigned to appear to me 
 And in a vision full of majesty 
 Will'd me to leave my base vocation 
 And free my country from calamity. 
 18 
 
Tamora: Margaret: Joan oj Arc 
 
 This is all natural enough, if not very won- 
 derful, though even here I fancy I distinguish 
 Shakespeare's voice particularly in the second, 
 third, and fourth lines. In the last act, when her 
 father claims her, this is how Joan talks to him: 
 
 Decrepit miser ! base ignoble wretch ! 
 I am descended of a gentler blood; 
 
 Thou art no father nor no friend of mine. 
 
 And she is made to repeat this denial and this 
 foolish boast again and again. 
 
 This invention does not surprise me in Shake- 
 speare: it is all in character: Shakespeare, for- 
 getting the previous confession and making Joan 
 brag that she is of " nobler birth " and " issued 
 from the progeny of kings; " it is, I repeat, all in 
 keeping and just such a boast as would first sug- 
 gest itself to Shakespeare's snobbishness. But 
 Swinburne insists that not only is the execution 
 cruder than Shakespeare's style, but " the concep- 
 tion is unlike the idlest birth of his spirit." 
 
 Now I would not attribute the scene to Shake- 
 speare, even in youth, if I could help it, or if it 
 stood alone; but it does not. A dozen years 
 later he made somewhat the same fault though 
 an infinitely smaller one when telling the story 
 of Othello. The Moor wears " the shadow'd 
 livery of the burnish'd sun," is very dark or black 
 
 19 
 
The fFomeri of Shakespeare 
 
 in complexion, and so inferior to the fair Vene- 
 tian aristocrat, Desdemona, as Shakespeare felt 
 himself inferior to the maid of honour whom he 
 loved. But instead of leaving us with the pathos 
 of this inferiority, as soon as he begins to write 
 about Othello, he makes him brag of his " royal " 
 descent. Shakespeare's snobbery played havoc 
 with his art again and again though Swinburne 
 as an Englishman has not noticed the blunder- 
 ing. 
 
 For years I tried to believe with the poets that 
 this foul libel on one of the noblest of women 
 was not written by Shakespeare; but from the be- 
 ginning it was clear to me that he must have seen 
 it and approved of it, and gradually it became 
 manifest that he wrote in some of the worst lines 
 of it himself. At length I had to yield to the 
 evidence. It is his, I am afraid, from beginning 
 to end. If any one wishes to know where Shake- 
 speare started from, here is his lowest point. 
 This is where he stood in 1590 or thereabouts 
 when twenty-six years of age. This is what Eng- 
 lish patriotism and English snobbishness had 
 done for him — his nadir, so to speak. How he 
 swung out of it; in how vast an orbit, and what 
 heights he reached — that is his story, and the 
 world's wonder. 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HIS wife: adriana, the scold: katharina, 
 
 THE SHREW: CONSTANCE, THE TERMAGANT 
 
 npHE most obvious remark about these early 
 plays is that Shakespeare from the very 
 beginning identified himself with the gentle, 
 saintly, and unfortunate characters, and so real- 
 ized them for us. The figure of the dying Mor- 
 timer is irradiated by the splendour of his 
 poetry; the saintly Henry VI. livei> for us like a 
 portrait of Fra Angelico, and when he paints a 
 mere fighting man such as Talbot, he cannot help 
 lending him his own magnanimous generosity. 
 Even as a youth, Shakespeare has infinitely more 
 of the milk of human kindness in him than any 
 other great poet. It is for this reason that the 
 vile hard caricature of Joan of Arc is such a blot 
 upon his work. He is more like Marcus Au- 
 relius than Goethe or Cervantes; but even Mar- 
 cus Aurelius has not his all-pitying soul, his 
 inexhaustible sympathy. One must just notice 
 
 21 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 here, too, that he Is saved from a suspicion of 
 mawkishness by his humour; his Jack Cade Is 
 the first of those inimitable comic creations, of 
 whom Falstaff is the crown and king. 
 
 Curiously enough in the earliest plays, Shake- 
 speare seems to have known little or nothing 
 about women; at least he was unable to give 
 them artistic life. His women were at the best 
 historical or traditional lay figures such as Venus 
 and Lucrece and Margaret and at the worst 
 mere masks or libels on humanity like Tamora 
 in Titus Andronicus and the Joan of Arc — not 
 a living creature among them all. 
 
 Suddenly in the crowd of lifeless marionettes 
 we catch the hot eyes of an angry woman; she 
 is painted French-wise, mainly by shadows or 
 faults, and these are repeated again and again 
 with vehement and extravagant exaggeration, the 
 personal feeling of the painter showing itself in 
 every stroke. Of course I am speaking of The 
 Comedy of Errors and the portrait of the jeal- 
 ous wife, Adriana. At the moment, I am not 
 concerned to determine whether The Comedy of 
 Errors is earlier or later than the First Part of 
 King Henry VI. or Love's Labour's Lost. It 
 was not revised later and bettered as was Love's 
 Labour's Lost. It was probably written soon 
 
 22 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 after 1589, and Is certainly one of Shakespeare's 
 earliest works. 
 
 The sketch of Adriana is crude but vivid; the 
 woman lives for us indeed, much as The Second 
 Mrs. Tanqueray lives mainly through ill-temper. 
 Who is it? one naturally asks: who is the jealous 
 railing woman who made such an Impression on 
 young Shakespeare that he cannot but paint her 
 and make her live for us by reason of his very 
 hatred? I say it was his wife, whom he had been 
 forced to marry and the critics all laugh; nothing 
 so preposterous has ever been suggested to them. 
 What next, indeed? 
 
 Before I go on to prove that the jealous scold 
 Adriana was a picture of Shakespeare's wife, 
 and was deliberately intended by him for a por- 
 trait of her, let me just say that even this is not 
 the first time that he has mentioned his forced 
 marriage and its unhappy consequences. I have 
 already shown that he Identifies himself with the 
 lover Suffolk in the First Part of King Henry 
 FL, and particularly In the courtship of Mar- 
 garet. 
 
 When the lords oppose the choice of Margaret 
 as queen, Suffolk exclaims : 
 
 A dower, my lords ! disgrace not so your king, 
 That he should be so abject, base and poor, 
 2S 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 To choose for wealth and not for perfect love. 
 Henry is able to enrich his queen 
 And not to seek a queen to make him rich: 
 So worthless peasants bargain for their wives. 
 As market-men for oxen^ sheep, or horse. 
 
 Marriage is a matter of more worth 
 Than to be dealt in by attorneyship; 
 Not whom we will, but whom his grace affects. 
 Must be companion of his nuptial bed: 
 And therefore, lords, since he aifects her most 
 It most of all these reasons bindeth us. 
 In our opinions she should be preferr'd. 
 For rvhat is wedlock forced but a hell. 
 An age of discord and continual strife? 
 Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss, 
 And is a pattern of celestial peace. 
 
 The first two lines which I have put in italics 
 cry for explanation. They must strike any reader 
 as astonishing, for they are not in keeping with 
 the circumstances; they absolutely destroy Suf- 
 folk's own argument; for, strange to say, Suf- 
 folk himself is dealing in this very matter as an 
 *' attorney," and stranger still, a little earlier in 
 scene 3 of the same act, he applies the very word 
 " attorney " to himself: 
 
 And yet, methinks, I could be well content 
 To be my own attorney in this case. 
 
 How is this confusion to be explained? Only 
 in one way so far as I can see. In youth, 
 even a Shakespeare has not much observation 
 
 24 
 
His Wije: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 of life with which to stuff out his characters; 
 he is almost compelled to draw on his own 
 experiences, to say nothing of the fact that his 
 experiences and their vivid emotions press for ut- 
 terance. But even in his earliest works Shake- 
 speare is not apt to make a lover, whom he uses 
 as a mouthpiece, argue against himself save for 
 overpowering personal reasons; his own mar- 
 riage, we know, had been forced on him by the 
 attorneyship of Anne Hathaway's father's two 
 friends, Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, and 
 he could not forgive the interference. That is 
 why marriage must not be *' dealt in by attorney- 
 ship : " why Suffolk unconsciously is made to stul- 
 tify himself. 
 
 The next passage marked in italics proves that 
 this '^ assumption " of mine is correct : Suffolk 
 talks of " wedlock forced " as " but a hell " 
 though no one but himself is trying to force any 
 bride upon Henry. The truth is Shakespeare 
 has identified himself with the lover Suffolk at 
 once, and he drags in his own painful experience 
 though here it is worse than out of place : for it 
 makes Suffolk condemn Suffolk's action. Mani- 
 festly Shakespeare is here thinking of his own 
 " forced wedlock " which he found to be " a hell 
 — an age of discord and continual strife." 
 
 25 
 
The fVotneji of Shakespeare 
 
 Now let us consider whether these inferences 
 are confirmed by the portrait of Adriana In The 
 Comedy of Errors. The first thing I notice is 
 that the jealous " scolding " bitter wife is out of 
 place in the gay comedy of mistaken Identity; It 
 would be In better keeping with the spirit of the 
 play if Adriana were a very loving and affection- 
 ate creature, for then there would be some amuse- 
 ment in her mistaking the wrong Antipholus for 
 her husband, and lavishing caresses on the wrong 
 man. Still, the critics are obdurate; they can de- 
 duce nothing from the dramatist's bad work. 
 But to the fair-minded reader my inference 
 (which alone explains the faulty facts) must 
 create at least a suspicion; and now for further 
 evidence. Almost the only thing we know cer- 
 tainly about Shakespeare's wife Is that she was 
 eight years older than he was. This peculiar trait 
 has nothing to do with Adriana; moreover, It Is 
 the very last thing a jealous scolding woman would 
 tell about herself; in the play It weakens her ap- 
 peal; and yet Shakespeare makes Adriana tell It. 
 In spite of this some English critics pooh-pooh 
 what they persist In calling my '' assumption." If 
 we knew that Shakespeare's wife squinted and 
 Adriana admitted that she had a cast in her eye 
 and deplored the fact, these gentry would still say 
 
 26 
 
His Wije: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 that the simple identification was a chance coin- 
 cidence. 
 
 At the risk of explaining the obvious, I shall 
 accumulate proof on proof, warning my antago- 
 nists at the same time that there are many more 
 weapons still unused in the armoury. For truth 
 has a strange power of calling up evidence to its 
 support and there is some danger that in this field 
 even I, a hundred years hence, may be regarded 
 as an authority, and so in turn become, dread 
 thought! food for the professors! 
 
 I shall transcribe a couple of scenes where 
 Adriana figures and ask my readers to notice 
 first of all the difference between Shakespeare's 
 painting of Adriana and her sister. Adriana is 
 introduced to us J||^ fretting because her husband 
 does not return home, an4 her sister advises pa- 
 tience. 
 
 Adr. Neither my husband nor the slave return'd. 
 That in such haste I sent to seek his master ! 
 Sure, Luciana, it is two o'clock. 
 
 Luc. Perhaps some merchant hath invited him 
 
 And from the mart he's somewhere gone to dinner. 
 
 Good sister, let us dine and never fret: 
 
 A man is master of his liberty: 
 
 Time is their master, and when they see time 
 
 They'll go or come; if so, be patient, sister. 
 
 Adr. Why should their liberty than ours be more? 
 
 Luc. Because their business still lies out o' door. 
 
 Adr. Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill. 
 
 27 
 
The fVomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 Luc. O, know he is the bridle of your will. 
 
 Adr. There's none but asses will be bridled so. 
 
 Luc. Why, headstrong liberty is lash'd with woe. 
 There's nothing situate under heaven's eye 
 But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky: 
 The beasts, the fishes and the winged fowls. 
 Are their males' subjects and at their controls: 
 Men, more divine, the masters of all these. 
 Lords of the wide world and wild watery seas^ 
 Indu'd with intellectual sense and souls. 
 Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls. 
 Are masters to their females, and their lords: 
 Then let your will attend on their accords. 
 
 Adr. This servitude makes you to keep unwed. 
 
 Luc. Not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed. 
 
 Adr. But, were you wedded, you would bear some sway. 
 
 Luc. Ere I learn love, I'll practise to obey. 
 
 Adr. How if your husband start some other where? 
 
 Luc. Till he come home again, I would forbear. . . . 
 
 And so on and on. 
 
 This extraordinary scene should, I think, carry 
 its own lesson. First of all an unmarried sister 
 is hardly likely to be so patient as a married 
 woman; again, an unmarried sister is not likely 
 to take the husband's part; finally, no unmarried 
 sister ever yet spoke in favour of a man as Lu- 
 ciana speaks in this long tirade against liberty 
 which she should have addressed to the straying 
 husband and not to the faithful wife. Mani- 
 festly, Shakespeare is making the sister Luciana, 
 in defiance of probability, admonish and reprove 
 his wife as he would wish her to have been ad- 
 
 28 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 monished and reproved. Adriana is as natural 
 In jealousy and Impatience as Luclana is unnatu- 
 ral. And she displays the same temper and im- 
 patience again and again in the following scene 
 with Dromio of Ephesus. Indeed here she car- 
 ries her ill-temper to such a pitch that she would 
 beat the servant and again her unsisterly sister re- 
 proves her. 
 
 Then at once comes the incredible scene wherein 
 Adriana admits her own age, and worse still ad- 
 mits Its deforming effect: 
 
 Luc. Fie, how impatience loureth in your face! 
 
 Adr. His company must do his minions grace 
 Whilst I at home starve for a merry look. 
 Hath homely age the alluring beauty took 
 From my poor cheek'? then he hath wasted it: 
 Are my discourses dull? barren my wit? 
 If voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd 
 Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard: 
 Do their gay vestments his affections bait? 
 That's not my fault: he's master of my state: 
 What ruins are in me that can be found. 
 By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground 
 Of my defeatures. My decayed fair 
 A sunny look of his would soon repair: 
 But too unruly deer, he breaks the pale 
 And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale. 
 
 At the risk of maddening my adversaries, 1 
 must point out that every word of this weird 
 speech throws light on Shakespeare's married 
 
 29 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 life. To take the main point first: no jealous 
 woman would mention her age, and if she did 
 mention it in anger, it would be to declare that it 
 had not affected her beauty. But this Adriana 
 confesses her age; confesses, too, that it has 
 robbed her of her " alluring beauty"; she harps 
 on the fact, indeed, that she is a '' decayed fair." 
 Shakespeare was cruel to poor Anne Hathaway. 
 Now take the first line of her speech; "his 
 minions "; Adriana is not jealous of one in espe- 
 cial as women are apt to be, but of many — we 
 shall soon see that this is Shakespeare confessing 
 his love of gay company and an audience. Take 
 the second line : she starves at home for " a 
 merry look " — surely a woman would say for " a 
 loving look"; it is again Shakespeare painting 
 himself. Let no one think this is supersubtle; it 
 is obvious : Shakespeare repeats the touch a few 
 lines further on — " a sunny look ": he is describ- 
 ing himself. Then, too, what woman would think 
 of excusing her " dull discourses "? her " barren 
 wit"? These are Shakespeare's charges against 
 his wife. Again; would any woman admit in this 
 way that the others of whom she is jealous have 
 *' gay vestments " while she has none; she would 
 rather make this to her sister the chief reason 
 why her husband neglects her and not the loss of 
 
 30 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 her good looks. Every word of it all Is, uncon- 
 sciously, a confession of young Shakespeare him- 
 self. The incredible sister continues: 
 
 Luc. Self-harming jealousy! — fie^ beat it hence! 
 
 Adr. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense. 
 I know his eye doth homage other where: 
 Or else what lets it but he would be here? 
 Sister, you know he promised me a chain; 
 Would that alone, alone he would detain. 
 So he would keep fair quarters with his bed. 
 
 Since that my beauty cannot please his eye, 
 
 I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die. 
 
 Luc. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy! 
 
 Shakespeare's accusation of his wife is so 
 naively out of character that it serves to convict 
 him and paints their relations even to the sensual 
 touch in the line I have italicised. 
 
 One other thing which Adriana says, later, 
 must be relieved out because it throws light on 
 Shakespeare himself: 
 
 Adr. Husband, I'll dine above with you to-day, 
 
 And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks. . . . 
 
 Surely these snapshots of the jealous, scolding 
 Adriana and of merry sunny vagrant Shake- 
 speare full of " a thousand idle pranks " in gay 
 company may be accepted in their entirety. 
 
 But even this series of intimate pictures, all 
 31 
 
The JVomcii oj Shakespeare 
 
 out of place as they are In the play, do not ex- 
 haust the evidence that Indeed Shakespeare Is 
 here giving us a complete account of his rela- 
 tions with his wife. It says much for his fair- 
 ness of mind and his forglvlngness of temper 
 that he is not content to portray Adriana as a 
 jealous scold without admitting that she had 
 some ground for jealousy: with real dramatic 
 Insight he even goes on to fecundate her " bar- 
 ren wit " with reasonable arguments : 
 
 Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown: 
 Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects; 
 I am not Adriana nor thy wife. 
 The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow 
 That never words were music to thine ear. 
 That never object pleasing to thine eye. 
 That never touch well welcomed to thy hand. 
 That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste. 
 Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carv'd to 
 
 thee. 
 How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it. 
 That thou art thus estranged from thyself.^ 
 Thyself I call it, being strange to me. 
 That, undividable, incorporate. 
 Am better than thy dear self's better part. 
 Ah, do not tear away thyself from me ! 
 For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall 
 A drop of water in the breaking gulf. 
 And take unmingled thence that drop again. 
 Without addition or diminishing. 
 As take from me thyself and not me too. 
 How dearly would it touch thee to the quick, 
 Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious. . . . 
 
His Wije: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 In this vein she goes on arguing and pleading 
 for pages. 
 
 I must now leave to my readers the other pas- 
 sages where Adriana's characteristics are re- 
 peated again and again, and always over-em- 
 ^ phaslzed and content myself with transcribing the 
 astounding scene at the end of the play, where 
 Shakespeare betrays himself finally and fully, 
 the scene in which the Abbess leads Adriana on 
 to confess her jealous nagging and then shames 
 her. The scene is utterly out of place; it does 
 not advance, but retards the action; it is a blot 
 and blunder only to be accounted for by Shake- 
 speare's personal bitterness : 
 
 Abb. How long hath this possession held the man.f^ 
 
 Adr. This week he hath been heavy^ sour, sad. 
 And much different from the man he was: 
 But till this afternoon his passion 
 Ne'er brake into extremity of rage. 
 
 Abb. Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea? 
 Buried some dear friend.^ Hath not else his eye 
 Stray'd his affection in unlawful love.^ 
 A sW prevailing much in youthful men, 
 Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing. 
 Which of these sorrows is he subject to.'' 
 
 Adr. To none of these, except it be the last; 
 
 Namely, some love that drew him oft from home. 
 
 Abb. You should for that have reprehended him. 
 
 Adr. Why, so I did. 
 
 Abb. Ah, but not rougli enougli. 
 
 Adr. As roughly as my modesty would let me. 
 
 Abb. Haply, in private. 
 
 33 
 
The fVorneii of Shakespeare 
 
 Adr. And in assemblies too. 
 
 Abb. Ay, but not enough. 
 
 Adr. It was the copy of our conference; 
 
 In bed he slejit not for my urging it; 
 
 At board he fed not for my urging it; 
 
 Alone, it was the subject of my theme; 
 
 In company I often glanced it; 
 
 Still did I tell him it was vile and bad. 
 Abb. And therefore came it that the man was mad; 
 
 The venom clamours of a jealous woman 
 
 Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. . . . 
 
 If any one In face of this carefully manufac- 
 tured, ostensibly impartial, but in reality viru- 
 lent condemnation can still maintain that Adri- 
 ana was not meant for Shakespeare's wife, he 
 should at least account In some other way for 
 the hundred astonishing facts In this story which 
 my " assumption " assuredly does explain with 
 perfect ease and simplicity. 
 
 Shakespeare has not even left us In doubt 
 about his attitude as a husband towards his wife. 
 From the very beginning he has Identified him- 
 self, as I have elsewhere proved, with Antipholus 
 of Syracuse, and this is the way Antlpholus- 
 Shakespeare speaks of Adrlana: 
 
 She that doth call me husband, even my soul 
 Doth for a wife abhor. . . . 
 
 Now there is no reason for thi^ abhorrence In 
 the play; on the contrary, Antipholus has been 
 
 34 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 well treated by Adriana : she has taken him to 
 dinner, and been kind to him. How are we to 
 explain this uncalled-for and over-emphatic con- 
 demnation? How can we account for it save by 
 the fact that poor Shakespeare Is thinking of his 
 own forced marriage and his jealous, scolding, 
 violent wife? 
 
 We shall soon see that the circumstances of 
 Shakespeare's forced marriage and his unhappy 
 relations with his wife, as narrated In my book. 
 The Man Shakespeare, come to view again and 
 again In these youthful works; we meet refer- 
 ences to It, sidelong glances at It, In the most un- 
 likely places. 
 
 Lovers Labour's Lost should now be consid- 
 ered, but It was so completely revised In 1597 
 that from my present point of view I must not 
 handle It here except to say that neither the 
 Princess nor any of her ladles, with the exception 
 of Rosaline, has any existence whatever. They 
 are one and all mere lay figures Introduced to 
 show off Shakespeare's wit. Rosaline, Indeed, Is 
 alive from head to foot, but her character, being 
 wholly due to the later revision, must be consid- 
 ered later. 
 
 I can dismiss Richard IL even more curtly; 
 there is no woman's portrait In it worth men- 
 
 35 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 tioning; and I could pass over Richard III. which 
 is a continuation of the Third Part of Henry VI., 
 just as quickly, were it not for the fact that the 
 great scene in the first act, the wooing of Anne 
 by Gloucester, is declared by Coleridge not to 
 have been written by Shakespeare. Coleridge 
 does not tell us who else could have conceived 
 this w^onderful scene. He contents himself with 
 a bare denial, and of course the professors fol- 
 low him into the ditch. Poor, weak Coleridge 
 could not sympathize with the masterly life In the 
 episode; the cynical audacity of the hunchback 
 revolted him, and so he refused to ascribe the 
 scene to his Idol. 
 
 The marriage of Richard with the widow of 
 the man he murdered Is recorded by Holinshed 
 without remark. It Is one of those almost in- 
 credible facts which occur in life, but which 
 genius alone would try to use In art or to explain. 
 Instead of passing lightly over the difficulty or 
 omitting all mention of it, Shakespeare seizes on 
 it eagerly; difficulties are to him stepping-stones 
 and vantages, and this one enables him to express 
 some of his youthful contempt for women and 
 some of his admiration for the triumphant brains 
 and adroitness of a man. Transmuted into a sex- 
 duel the incident becomes one of his greatest 
 
His Wije: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 scenes, an unforgettable picture. The episode 
 delays the action; but Richard lives in it with 
 such intensity of life; his wooing is so masterly, 
 his cynical effrontery so astounding that we can 
 never afterwards see him but in this fierce, raw 
 limelight. The whole scene undoubtedly belongs 
 to the master; no one else could have done such 
 work. 
 
 At the very beginning, Richard shows the sinu- 
 ous fierceness of a wild cat. He first orders, then 
 threatens, then turns to Anne with obsequious 
 flattery: 
 
 Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst, 
 
 and on the very next page his prayer: 
 
 Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman . . . 
 
 removes all doubt: it is all Shakespeare, and 
 most characteristic. Richard goes on to talk of 
 " beauty's wreck . . . thy heavenly face that 
 set me on . . ." and pictures Edward as 
 " framed in the prodigality of nature " — -every 
 touch pure Shakespeare. He even breaks in with 
 the " Tush " we have already found in the char- 
 acteristic Shakespearean speeches of Suffolk in 
 the First Part of Henry VI. and which we shall- 
 find again in Romeo. Every word in the scene 
 was written by Shakespeare; but marvellously as 
 
 37 
 
The fFomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 Richard is painted in it, Anne scarcely comes to 
 light at all. She curses at first and rails with 
 something o^ the malignant verbosity of Mar- 
 garet; but there is hardly more than a suggestion 
 of individual life. When Richard tells her that 
 he will kill himself, Anne Is touched and there is 
 just a hint of character-drawing : she says : 
 
 I would I knew thy hearty 
 
 — just one good stroke, and no more. She turns 
 to joy and affection too suddenly to be human; 
 she's a weather-hen in woman's shape and that's 
 all. 
 
 This crude painting of Anne, and Shake- 
 speare's manifest contempt of her, give us the 
 true explanation of the scene. His vanity had 
 been wounded in his unhappy marriage; he had 
 been bruised and beaten In the sordid strife with 
 his wife and forced to fly; but he still held that 
 the man was the master: he harped on the 
 thought to strengthen his belief: 
 
 She is a woman^ therefore may be woo'd; 
 She is a woman, therefore may be won. 
 
 Titus Andronicus. 
 and: 
 
 She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd; 
 She is a woman, therefore to be won. 
 
 /. Henry VI. 
 
 SZ 
 
His Wije: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 and again : 
 
 That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man. 
 If witli- his tongue he cannot win a woman. 
 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 
 and finally Richard himself cries: 
 
 Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? 
 Was ever woman in this humour won? 
 
 Evidently Shakespeare means to show us by 
 Richard's triumph how easy It Is with flattering 
 words to overcome and win a woman, even a 
 woman maddened with grief and resentment. 
 This Is the balm which the young poet lays to his 
 hurt pride. 
 
 Before I try and corroborate this argument 
 from another play let me just remark that the 
 other female figures In Richard III. are no bet- 
 ter drawn than that of Anne. The Duchess of 
 York and Queen Elizabeth rave and lament as 
 Margaret raved: there Is no Individual life In 
 any of them. 
 
 The women characters In The Taming of the 
 Shrezv hardly deserve consideration. Neither 
 Katharlna nor Blanca Is worthy to be called a 
 woman's portrait; we only know a trait or two 
 of them, and the widow Is not even outlined. 
 But the play Itself has another and deeper In- 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 tcrest for us as throwing light on Shakespcarc^s 
 life and character. In spite of the enormous 
 success it has had on the stage and the fact that 
 it has held its place in popular liking even 
 to our time, it is a wretchedly poor farce, and 
 the theme is utterly unworthy of the master. 
 Some of the play does not read like him; but his 
 hand is quite plainly revealed in the scenes be- 
 tween Katharina and Petruchio; in fact the tam- 
 ing of the shrew is his. One cannot but wonder 
 why Shakespeare ever put hand to such a paltry 
 subject. The answer comes pat to those who be- 
 lieve that he himself had been married unhappily 
 to a jealous, ill-tempered scold. Marriage had 
 been a defeat to him: he could not but see that; 
 in this play he will comfort his pride by showing 
 how even a shrew can be mastered; how violence 
 can be subdued by violence. The moment one 
 looks at the play from this point of view, its 
 subconscious purpose becomes clear to one and its 
 faults are all explained. When Katharina obeys 
 her husband, Hortensio asks: 
 
 ... I wonder what it bodes? 
 
 and Petruchio replies: 
 
 Marry, peace it bodes, and love and quiet life, 
 And awful rule and right supremacy; 
 And, to be short, what not, that's sweet and happy? 
 40 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 In no other way but as a salve to wounded 
 vanity can one explain Katharlna's appalling- 
 foolish lecture to the other wives with which the 
 play reaches its climax in Act 5, scene 2. 
 
 Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow. 
 And dart not scornful glances from those eyes. 
 To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor. . . . 
 * * -x- * * 
 
 A woman moved is like a fountain troubled. 
 Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty; 
 And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty 
 Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. . . . 
 
 Even with the explanation in mind one is in- 
 clined to marvel how Shakespeare could seriously 
 pen such drivel; but he goes on raving for an- 
 other thirty lines: 
 
 Such duty as the subject owes the prince 
 Even such a woman oweth to her husband; 
 And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour. 
 And not obedient to his honest will. 
 What is she but a foul contending rebel 
 And graceless traitor to her loving lord.f* . . . 
 ***** 
 Come, come, you froward and unable worms! . . . . 
 
 Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot. 
 
 And place your hands below your husband's foot. . . . 
 
 Any one who knows Shakespeare will find an 
 accent of personal feeling in every line of this 
 
 41 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 silly tirade. The proof that my explanation is the 
 right one may be carried to minute detail. As 
 soon as Shakespeare finished writing this aston- 
 ishing speech of Katharina he threw down the 
 pen; the last ten lines of this play or most of 
 them, appear to be written by another hand; the 
 interest had gone out of the thing for him when 
 Katharina was sufficiently humbled and he tossed 
 the farce aside. It Is to be hoped that he got rid 
 In it of some of the bitterness and anger which 
 his wife's Ill-temper, jealousy, and shrewish na- 
 ture had bred in him. But enough and more 
 than enough hatred of her burned In him all 
 through his life. 
 
 I must consider here a play which was written 
 two or three years later because though It belongs 
 to happy hours, to the spring-tide Indeed of his 
 success in London, It deals again with Strat- 
 ford, brings again his wife sharply to memory 
 and shows how Intimately the poet's life was In- 
 terwoven with his art. 
 
 King John is with some certainty dated about 
 1596. It was in 1596 that Shakespeare visited 
 Stratford for the first time after an absence of 
 eight or nine years: he was recalled orobably by 
 the news that his son Hamnet was very 111. His 
 son's death made a great Impression on Shake- 
 
 42 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 speare; it Is responsible, I think, for the exqui- 
 site tenderness, beauty and pathos with which he 
 has Invested the figure of young Arthur, and also 
 for the tragic intensity of the Queen-mother's 
 grief. 
 
 Shakespeare took his King John from an old 
 play which we still possess. The Troublesome 
 Reign of King John. In it Constance is pictured 
 as high-tempered and Arthur as a bold youth of 
 eighteen or nineteen, but Shakespeare turned 
 Arthur Into a young boy, a girl-boy, all affection 
 and tenderness, and at the same time hardened 
 Constance into a " bedlam." Constance Is pre- 
 sented to us as so bad-tempered, such a raging 
 wordy termagant that I am forced to believe 
 Shakespeare is again thinking of his own wife. 
 For there Is no object in making Constance a 
 shrew; Shakespeare paints her afterwards as a 
 mother mourning for her only son, and evidently 
 tries to bring out all the pathos of her misery, 
 he would have done better, therefore, not to have 
 alienated one's sympathy from her at the begin- 
 ning by making her an Intolerable scold. But he 
 had just been In Stratford, his wife had been be- 
 fore his eyes, and he cannot help depicting her 
 raging violent passion. Constance Is as bad-tem- 
 pered as Adrlana herself, and that's saying a 
 
 43 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 good deal. From the point of view of art the 
 bad temper of Constance is much more significant. 
 After all Adriana had some reason for her ill- 
 humour. She was passionately in love, madly- 
 jealous, and her husband neglected her; but this 
 Constance is a raging termagant without any such 
 cause. We cannot, therefore, understand her ill- 
 humour; we simply dislike her and accordingly 
 have less sympathy with her in her affliction. 
 
 Constance comes on the stage at the begin- 
 ning of the second act. At first she is becomingly 
 grateful for the help offered to her by King 
 Philip and Austria and counsels patience and 
 peace. A moment later she begins to rant and 
 rage ; even her gentle son Arthur has to reprove 
 her: 
 
 Good my mother, peace ! 
 I would that I were low laid in my grave: 
 I am not worth this coil that's made for me. 
 
 But nothing can stop Constance's tongue. She 
 raves even worse than Margaret raved, till at 
 last King John pulls her up with: 
 
 Bedlam, have done. 
 
 She answers him: 
 
 I have but this to say . . . 
 
 and rages on; she is indeed as Elinor calls her, 
 
 44 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 Ian " unadvised scold." . . . Austria reproves 
 her, and at length King Philip cries: 
 
 Peace, lady! pause, or be more temperate; 
 
 She appears again at the opening of the third 
 act. She has learned from Salisbury that peace 
 has been made between France and England, and 
 'her temper comes again to show: 
 
 Gone to be married ! gone to swear a peace ! 
 False blood to false blood join'd! gone to be friends! 
 Shall Lewis have Blanch, and Blanch those provinces? 
 It is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard; . . . 
 
 After holding forth for a page or so In this 
 strain she attacks Salisbury the messenger, for 
 bringing the tidings : 
 
 Fellow, be gone: I cannot brook thy sight: 
 
 This news hath made thee a most ugly man. 
 Sal. What other harm have I, good lady, done. 
 
 But spoke the harm that is by others done? 
 Const. Which harm within itself so heinous is 
 
 As it makes harmful all that speak of it. 
 Arth. I do beseech you, madam, be content. . . . 
 
 But nothing will content her. She raves on page 
 
 after page, now against Philip, now against Aus- 
 
 1 tria, till one wonders how the princes could have 
 
 : stood It, and when Pandulph enters she asks 
 
 characteristically for leave to curse: 
 
 O, lawful let it be 
 That I have room with Rome to curse awhile! . . • 
 45 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 A raging ranting cursing scold she is, and noth- 
 ing more. 
 
 Suddenly the overloud note is muted: as soon 
 as Arthur is taken prisoner she jumps to the con- 
 clusion that he Is dead; long before even the fa- 
 mous scene between Hubert and Arthur takes 
 place, she grieves for her child as lost. The 
 agony of her grief is so realized that it carries 
 us all away with it, and turns the furious scold 
 into one of the great tragic figures of our litera- 
 ture. 
 
 At first she does not strike the true note. 
 When Philip counsels patience and comfort she 
 raves : 
 
 No^ I defy all counsel, all redress, 
 But that which ends all counsel, true redress, 
 Death, death; O amiable, lovely death! 
 Thou odoriferous stench ! sound rottenness ! 
 Arise forth from the couch of lasting night. 
 Thou hate and terror to prosperity. . . . 
 
 and so on, plainly the poet talking and not yet 
 In the spirit of the part. But as soon as Con- 
 stance thinks of her son, her voice falls to mourn- 
 ful sadness, and takes on the very accent of re- 
 gret: 
 
 ... I was Geffrey's wife; 
 Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost: 
 I am not mad: I would to heaven I were! 
 46 
 
I 
 
 His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 For then, 'tis like I should forget myself: 
 O, if I could, what grief should I forget! 
 Preach some philosophy to make me mad, 
 And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal; 
 
 too well, too well I feel 
 The different plague of each calamity. 
 
 King Philip prays her to bind up her hair, and 
 she goes off again: 
 
 Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it? 
 I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud 
 " O that these hands could so redeem my son, 
 As they have given these hairs their liberty ! " 
 But now I envy at their liberty. 
 And will again commit them to their bonds. 
 Because my poor child is a prisoner. . . . 
 
 There is distinct individuality now in the scold- 
 ing verbosity, which characterizes even her grief. 
 But it is when she again talks of the child that she 
 touches the heart: 
 
 There was not such a gracious creature born. 
 But now will canker sorrow eat my bud 
 And chase the native beauty from his cheek 
 And he will look as hollow as a ghost 
 As dim and meagre as an ague's fit. 
 And so he'll die; and, rising so again. 
 When I shall meet him in the court of heaven 
 I shall not know him: therefore never, never 
 Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. . . . 
 
 This seems to me Shakespeare's own emotion. 
 The wonderful first line : 
 
 47 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 There was not such a gracious creature born 
 
 is unmistakable, and he will give us that " gra- 
 cious " again. 
 
 When the mother-grief of Constance swings 
 higher still and reaches the soul of sorrow, to 
 me it is again Shakespeare speaking, Shakespeare 
 lamenting his own loss, at least for the first six 
 lines : 
 
 Grief fills the room up of my absent child. 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me. 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words. 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts. 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; 
 Then, have I reason to be fond of grief? 
 Fare you well: had you such a loss as I 
 I could give better comfort than you do. 
 I will not keep this form upon my head. 
 When there is such disorder in my wit. 
 O Lord ! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son ! 
 My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! 
 My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure! 
 
 The last seven lines are poor stuff, and the 
 last four words out of place, intolerable: but the 
 first lines are all perfect till the poet tries to think 
 himself into the character of Constance. For 
 this Constance lives in a frenzy as the poet takes 
 care to tell us that she dies in a frenzy too. For 
 years his furious scolding wife simply obsessed 
 Shakespeare; but the intense emotion which 
 
 48 
 
His Wife: Scold: Shrew: Termagant 
 
 throbs through these pages Is Shakespeare's own 
 emotion — his grief, his agony of bereavement — 
 speaking through the scolding mask. How lov- 
 
 I able his young boy must have been to have wrung 
 
 ' such a phrase from him : 
 
 There was not such a gracious creature born. 
 
 p The sorrow of young Hamnet's loss lived with 
 gentle Shakespeare for the rest of his life. Four- 
 teen or fifteen years later we find it again in The 
 Winter*s Tale when he describes young Mamll- 
 lius, who charms every one by telling fairy stories 
 with childish grace and dies through " thoughts 
 too high for one so tender." 
 
 I cannot regard any of the other women char- 
 acters In King John as more than historical lay 
 figures: Elinor Is as wooden as she can be, and 
 Blanch is no better. 
 
 My readers will notice that all through the 
 piece I take part with Shakespeare against his 
 wife. For a dozen reasons I accept his view that 
 she was a shrew of the worst; one may here suf-. 
 fice. From Jonson and Chettle we know that 
 Shakespeare was very gentle and sweet-tem- 
 pered, justified Indeed In portraying himself as 
 he allows the servant In The Comedy of Errors 
 to portray him as the reverse of " choleric." 
 
 49 
 
The fVomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 This mildness of Shakespeare Is attested by other 
 facts. He was criticized again and again by surly 
 Jonson, for Instance, now with reason, and now 
 without; yet remained a friend of Jonson's to the 
 end. He preached forgiveness, too, as a duty all 
 through his life, and yet he nursed his dislike of 
 his wife to the grave and beyond It, as I have 
 shown In The Man Shakespeare. She was the 
 one person whom he could never forgive. I am 
 convinced that the Xanthippe of Socrates was not 
 a more violent termagant than Anne Hathaway. 
 
 50 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SALVE TO VANITY : HOW WOMEN WOO ! ^THE 
 
 MIDSUMMER NIGHT's DREAM : THE TWO GEN- 
 TLEMEN OF VERONA: all's WFLL 
 
 TN the first two chapters I have said enough, I 
 think, about Shakespeare's eadiest attempts 
 at picturing women. No great master has ever 
 done worse. In spite of his rich sensual endow- 
 ment, and his incomparable gift of speech, his 
 first sketches were as bad as bad could be. To 
 say nothing of the atrocious Joan of Arc, it is 
 difficult to understand how a great man at 
 twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age could 
 have been content with a mere fiend like Ta- 
 mora or a typical lay figure like Queen Mar- 
 garet, and the talkative princess and her maid- 
 ens in Lovers Labour's Lost, and the innumerable 
 duchesses and great ladies of the early historical 
 plays are all just as wooden, mere marionettes. 
 
 The portrait of his jealous, scolding wife as 
 Adriana is the first sketch which has any indi- 
 vidual life in it. His unhappy marriage over- 
 
 51 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 shadows much of his early work. We have 
 traced it in Suffolk's wooing of Margaret in the 
 First Part of Kitig Henry VI.; it dominates the 
 whole of The Comedy of Errors; it inspires the 
 great scene between the hunchback and Anne in 
 Richard III.; it supplies the theme of The Tam- 
 ing of the Shrew and explains the otherwise in- 
 explicable tirade in that play against those wives 
 who are not the mere slavish instruments of their 
 husbands' pleasure. 
 
 Even the servility of Katharina and the sub- 
 mission of Anne did not satisfy Shakespeare. 
 He will now show us in play after play how girls 
 run after men. I cannot help thinking that the 
 taming of women and the triumphing over them 
 on the one hand and these pictures of girl after 
 girl pursuing the hero, with dog-like devotion on 
 the other were not only a balm to his wounded 
 vanity, but were also probably a result of young 
 Shakespeare's conquests of women in those early 
 years in London. 
 
 His success in every field had been astound- 
 ing. He had come to the Bankside at twenty- 
 two or twenty-three years of age, an unknown 
 country lad, and in five or six years he had made 
 himself the first poet of his time, and the master 
 of the theatre. He was not only sensuous, good- 
 
 52 
 
The Salve to Vanity: How Women Woo! 
 
 looking, and sweet-mannered, but he had about 
 him the halo of genius; he had a good deal of 
 money, too, and could Invite ladles to the theatre 
 to see his plays. Love must have been offered 
 to him on every side, and the little soreness of 
 the ancient wound which still twitched In him, 
 made him eager to dwell on his triumphs, and 
 accordingly he pictures them for us In the Mid- 
 summer Nighfs Dream, In the first sketch of 
 Airs Well that Ends Well, and In The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona. In all these plays the 
 heroes are courted and pursued by the heroines. 
 This group of plays shows a considerable 
 growth In Shakespeare's knowledge of his art. 
 His life with his wife had humiliated and en- 
 raged him; but It had no doubt opened his eyes 
 and taught him that all women were not like the 
 creatures of his Imagination. The early happy 
 days in London, when he began to exercise his 
 craft successfully and make his way to the front, 
 were even richer in experiences. He had spent 
 laborious days bettering old plays of Greene and 
 others; had written thousands of passionate 
 verses, and above all had worked at one table 
 with Marlowe over Henry VI.: he had fleeted 
 wild nights with Bardolph and Pistol and Fal- 
 staff at Dame Quickly's; had met the lords of 
 
 53 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 life and masters of England with Southamp- 
 ton and Essex, and their charming easy-man- 
 nered friends, and was now on the crest of the 
 seventh wave of success. The merry girls o' the 
 Bankslde were proud of a smile from him: rich 
 citizens* dames were fluttered by his approach: 
 even high court ladies had a gracious greeting 
 for the handsome young poet. Sunny happy 
 days ripen the fruit; but It takes a storm to shake 
 It down. It was well for Shakespeare and for us 
 that his conceit and contentment came to a fall. 
 
 Late In 1596 or early In 1597 he met for the 
 first time the woman who was to change the 
 world for him. We can tell In his works the very 
 moment he saw her. As soon as he met her he 
 tried to paint her and at once began to abandon 
 the lay figures which he had hitherto mistaken 
 for heroines. From this time on his spiritual 
 growth Is astounding — a continuous flame-like 
 effort reaching up from height to height. There 
 Is nothing In literature so instructive and few 
 things so Interesting as the extraordinary growth 
 and development of Shakespeare's soul in the 
 madding fever of passion. 
 
 The Midsummer Nighfs Dream I Imagine 
 dates from 1594; I like to think of It as written 
 when Shakespeare was just thirty years of age. 
 
 5^ 
 
The Salve to Vanity: How Women Woo! 
 
 The play has a romantic individuality of its own. 
 It is a charming fairy tale and the hand of the 
 dramatist begins to show itself in the portraits of 
 the women. At first it is true they are not dif- 
 ferentiated as they are later: in the early scenes 
 Hermia might be Helena, and Helena, Hermia; 
 for they are both desperately in love, and that is 
 about all we know of them. Hermia is happy in 
 I.ysander^s affection, while Helena grieves be- 
 cause Demetrius scorns her; but these are dif- 
 ferences of circumstance and not of character. 
 Hermia begins to talk of her modesty and vir- 
 ginity, as all Shakespeare's girl heroines are in- 
 clined to talk, in contempt of probability; Helena, 
 too, tells Demetrius of Hermia's flight with Ly- 
 sander and so brings about a meeting between 
 the man she loves and her rival in defiance of 
 human nature ; in all this there is no hint of char- 
 acter-drawing. 
 
 But when Hermia and Helena quarrel in the 
 second scene of the third act they are for the mo- 
 ment clearly differenced, and curiously enough 
 Shakespeare tries to distinguish between the two 
 girls by contrasting their figures and tempers. 
 Hermia is shown to us as small, vehement, and 
 plucky, whilst Helena is tall, gentle, and faint- 
 hearted : 
 
 55 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Hel. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen. 
 Let her not hurt me: I was never curst; 
 I have no gift at all in shrewishness; 
 I am a right maid for my cowardice: 
 Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think. 
 Because she is something lower than myself. 
 That I can match her. ... 
 
 A little later she again recurs to this difference 
 and emphasizes the same trait : 
 
 Hel. O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd! 
 She was a vixen when she went to school. 
 But though she be but little, she is fierce. 
 
 This Is about the only touch of character-draw- 
 ing that can be found In the play. It is, how- 
 ever, sufficient for its purpose; the contrasted 
 sketches are in perfect keeping with the charm- 
 ing foolery, and show us besides that Shake- 
 speare is beginning to realize the necessity of 
 painting women as individual beings. For a mo- 
 ment these two love-laden girls, Helena and 
 Hermia, live for us^quarrelling, courting, kiss- 
 ing — and then we lose sight of them down some 
 green forest glade; for Titania takes the eye 
 as she passes with her cowslip-pensioners in their 
 golden coats, and we strain to catch a glimpse of 
 Puck In the happy rout, while Bottom, the prince 
 of mummers, roars like a lion, and the fairies flit 
 
 5Q 
 
The Salve to Vanity: How Women fFoo! 
 
 across the moonlit spaces, hanging the iiowers 
 with pearls of dew. 
 
 Like the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, The 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona is distinguished by its 
 lovelorn maidens and their unblushing pursuit 
 of the men they have chosen. The professors 
 say it was written a little before the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, but I can't believe it. Professor 
 Herford says, " striking similarities of phrase 
 and some in situation connect the play with the 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, as also with Romeo 
 and Juliet.'^ So far as the character-drawing of 
 the women is concerned The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona is far more closely connected, as we shall 
 see, with The Merchant of Venice. The pro- 
 fessor goes on to assert that though " far su- 
 perior In dramatic structure to Love's Labour's 
 Lost, it certainly bears a fainter mark of Shake- 
 speare's hand." This Is merely echoed nonsense. 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona is pure Shake- 
 speare from start to finish; young Shakespeare 
 at his most characteristic. I should put the play 
 later than the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, and 
 the latter part of the last act appears to have 
 been revised as late as 1598. 
 
 In Its present form It Is a far maturer work 
 than the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, at least in 
 
 57. 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 characterization. The construction is puerile in 
 both, but no sure Inference as to the date of com- 
 position can be drawn from this fact : for Shake- 
 speare was always careless of construction and 
 inexpert in what one might call the carpentry- 
 work of the stage. In The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona the construction is as amateurish as that 
 of the Midsummer Nighfs Dream. Julia is In 
 love with Proteus and Sylvia with Valentine, just 
 as Hermia was in love with Lysander, and 
 Helena with Demetrius. The greatest diflficulty 
 in this play Is to reconcile the childish construc- 
 tion with the maturity of the heroine's charac- 
 terization, for whereas Helena and Hermia at 
 first are mere stage names, and are never pro- 
 foundly studied, Julia In The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona Is painted with astonishing realism and 
 decision and lives for us as soon as she appears. 
 Let us study the portrait with all care for In 
 this Julia we have probably the first sketch 
 (taken from a distance) of the woman who 
 was the love of Shakespeare's life. The proofs 
 of all this will appear later; here one must be 
 content to remark the extraordinary. Immeasur- 
 able improvement In character-drawing. 
 
 In the second scene of the first act Julia comes 
 upon the stage and talks to her maid Lucetta, 
 
 58 
 
The Salve to Vanity: How Women Woo! 
 
 just as Portia and Nerissa a little later talk about 
 Portia's lovers. Julia wishes to know her maid's, 
 opinion as to which is the worthiest of the gen- 
 tlemen : 
 
 That every day with parle encounter me. . . . 
 
 Then as they are mentioned one by one she tells 
 them off, till Proteus is named, when she denies 
 not only her love, but her Interest In him, evi- 
 dently with the object of getting Lucetta to as- 
 sure her of his love and praise him: 
 
 Jul. Why he, of all the rest, hath never moved me. 
 Luc. Yet he, of all the rest, I think, best loves ye. 
 Jul. His little speaking shows his love but small. 
 Luc. Fire that's closest kept burns most of all. . . . 
 
 Shakespeare wishes to persuade his lady that 
 his tongue-tied timidity is the best proof of sin- 
 cerity; though he surely was never timid with a 
 girl of his own rank. Then comes a touch which 
 we have already noticed as the only realistic touch 
 in the character of Anne in Richard III.: Shake- 
 speare has to repeat his little " finds " of char- 
 acter-drawing, because as yet he has not many at 
 his command: 
 
 Jul. I would I knew his mind. . . . 
 
 Anne says to Gloucester; 
 
 I would I knew thy heart. . . . 
 59 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Julia then refuses to read the letter of Proteus; 
 swears, too, by her " modesty," and behaves as 
 the conventional Shakespearean girl. But no 
 sooner does the maid take her at her word and 
 go away than this Julia changes her tune: 
 
 Jul. And yet I would I had o'erlooked the letter; 
 It were a shame to call her back again 
 And pray her to a fault for which I chid her. 
 What a fool is she, that knows I am a maid. 
 And would not force the letter to my view! 
 * * * 4f * 
 
 My penance is to call Lucetta back 
 And ask remission for my folly past. 
 \^Tiat ho ! Lucetta ! 
 
 With such excellent touches of Impatient na- 
 ture Julia lives for us, as none of Shakespeare's 
 heroines has yet lived, and the dramatist displays 
 considerable Ingenuity In Inventing scenes In 
 which she may discover new traits of her char- 
 acter. He Is evidently studying this girl with 
 love's fine wit. When Lucetta comes back Julia 
 asks her about the dinner, and not about the 
 letter, and when after beating about the bush she 
 at length gets the letter, she tears It up and throws 
 the pieces aside, girlishly anxious not to betray her 
 passion to her maid. As soon as Lucetta goes out 
 of the room Julia picks up the letter, devours 
 It at a glance, kisses each several piece of paper 
 
 60 
 
The Salve to Vanity: How Women Woo! 
 
 for amends, and with a conceit which Is so natu- 
 ral and pretty that It excuses the suggestlveness, 
 ;she folds the bits of paper so that the words 
 i"poor forlorn Proteus . . . passionate Pro- 
 [teus " may He on " sweet Julia : '' 
 
 Thus will I fold them one upon another: 
 Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will. 
 
 There Is a good deal of passionate human na- 
 ture In this Julia, who Is twin-slster to the Im- 
 mortal Juliet, and who also reminds me of Portia 
 in a dozen traits. 
 
 When her lover Proteus goes to court, Julia de- 
 termines to follow him, and now she confesses 
 herself to her maid, as Portia will confess her 
 love for Bassanio to Nerissa. Julia finds a beau- 
 tiful phrase for her passion: 
 
 Didst thou but know the inly touch of love. . . . 
 
 That *' Inly '' Is to me delightful. 
 
 Julia has to be dressed up as a man, of course, 
 as Portia too will have to masquerade as a man, 
 and Shakespeare pictures this first dressing up 
 with more detail. Lucetta says she must cut off 
 her hair: Julia will not allow this; she will tie it 
 up In " true-love knots." Then she must wear 
 breeches. The maid here is smutty; but Julia 
 pulls her up at once. 
 
 61 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Jul. Lucetta, as thou lovest me, let me have 
 
 What thou thinkest meet and is most mannerly. 
 
 Just In the same way Portia pulls up Gratiano. 
 The whole picture Is astonishing, and at least as 
 elaborate as the portrait of Portia, though not 
 thrown on the paper with the same hr'io^ the same 
 ease of triumphant mastery. 
 
 In the fourth scene of the fourth act, when 
 Julia finds out that her Proteus Is In love with 
 Sylvia, she again finds the right word: 
 
 'Tis pity love should be so contrary; 
 
 she sighs, and Immediately contrasts her feelings 
 with those of Proteus, and so paints herself 
 again for us: 
 
 Because he loves her^ he despiseth me; 
 Because I love him^ I must pity him. 
 
 Then follows an astonishing scene when the 
 two rivals, Julia and Sylvia meet. Sylvia asks 
 Julia about Julia : 
 
 Is she not passing fair? 
 and Julia answers: 
 
 She hath been fairer, madam, than she is: 
 When she did think my master loved her well. 
 She, in my judgment, was as fair as you. . . . 
 
 62 
 
 
The Salve to Vanity: Hoiu Women Woo! 
 
 SiL. How tall was she ? 
 
 Jul. About my stature; .... 
 
 When Sylvia goes away, Julia sums her up in 
 soliloquy : 
 
 A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful! 
 
 I hope my master's suit will be but cold, 
 
 Since she respects my mistress' love so much. . . . 
 
 And Julia paints herself at the same time: 
 
 If I had such a tire, this face of mine 
 
 Were full as lovely as is this of hers: 
 
 And yet the painter flatter'd her a little. 
 
 Unless I flatter with myself too much. 
 
 Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow; 
 
 If that be all the diiference in his love, 
 
 I'll get me such a colour'd periwig. 
 
 Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine: 
 
 Ay, but her forehead's low, and mine's as high. 
 
 Then she takes up her rival's picture and talks 
 to it, as none of Shakespeare's heroines has 
 talked yet, quite naturally: 
 
 I'll use thee kindly for thy mistress' sake. 
 That used me so; or else, by Jove I vow 
 I should have scratch'd out your unseeing eyes. 
 To make my master out of love with thee! . . . 
 
 The touch of temper here is excellent. Julia's 
 character is kept up, even when she is in her boy's 
 dress in the last act, and in spite of the revision: 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 she Is both high-spirited and witty: she says to 
 her lover: 
 
 Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me 
 
 Such an immodest raiment, if shame live 
 
 In a disguise of love; 
 
 It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, 
 
 Women to change their shapes than men their minds. . . . 
 
 This Julia lives for us from beginning to end 
 of the play — a very careful full-length portrait 
 which recalls that of Portia again and again, so 
 that I am fain to believe that the same woman 
 sat for both pictures. The full significance of 
 this similarity will have to be brought out when I 
 handle Portia. Here I can do nothing but draw 
 attention to it, and to the fact that Julia is Shake- 
 speare's first achievement in this field: his first 
 portrait of a woman which has any Individual 
 life. The portrait belongs, I think, to the later 
 revision unless indeed the whole play is dated 
 much later than It has ever been dated, and later 
 than the first scenes appear to justify. 
 
 The painting of Julia Is altogether superior to 
 the rest of the play except the last scene, which 
 must also be due entirely to the later revision. 
 Sylvia, on the other hand, Is not Individualized 
 at all: she is modest, mild, lovely, faithful, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 64 
 
The Salve to Vanity: How Women Woo! 
 
 Wc now come to a very peculiar play, AlVs 
 Well that Ends Well. It Is the latest of the 
 plays In which the heroine follows the hero with 
 her love, and at length wins him, unless Indeed 
 we Include Twelfth Night as another variant on 
 the same theme, which I am not Inclined to do. 
 Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, AlVs Well 
 Is an early play which has been greatly revised, 
 but unlike The Tzvo Gentlemen of Verona the 
 revision has not been successful, partly I Imagine 
 because It is not so thorough-going; partly be- 
 cause It Is a much later work than the early sketch 
 and so the discrepancies jar Into contrasts. 
 When Shakespeare revised Julia In The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona, he made her all of a piece, 
 he had the model before him: but when he re- 
 vised Helena In AWs Well he left much of the 
 early sketch with Its silly conceits, affected word- 
 wit and rhymed letters, and these peculiarities 
 not only swear at the later touches, but render 
 the portrait utterly unrecognizable. For these 
 and other reasons which will appear later I pre- 
 fer to put off the criticism of AlFs Well till I can 
 consider the revision in its proper place. But in 
 the first sketch, indeed in the revision, too, 
 Helena is presented as pursuing Bertram with as 
 shameless a persistency as is shown by any of 
 
 65 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw's heroines. In Shakespeare's 
 case at least this procedure can safely be regarded 
 as a salve to wounded vanity. 
 
 In all that we have as yet read of Shakespeare 
 there Is to me nothing superhuman, nothing of 
 that ineffable quality which makes his name 
 sacred beyond all other names. Julia stands out 
 as very honest, careful work; the courtship of 
 Richard Is surprising; Titania and Bottom de- 
 lightful; the grief of Constance unforgettable; 
 young Arthur beautiful exceedingly; but these 
 are all separate scenes and personages, and per- 
 haps none of them is beyond the reach of some 
 other poet; though the width of range is already 
 Shakespeare's alone. Now In Romeo and Juliet 
 for the first time we are about to tread the prim- 
 rose way Into Shakespeare's kingdom. 
 
 66 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IDEALISTIC STUDIES OF HIS LOVE: JULIET: 
 
 PORTIA: BEATRICE: ROSALIND: VIOLA 
 
 T ALWAYS think of Rovieo and Juliet as of 
 the so-called Night Watch of Rembrandt; 
 it is full of minor faults all redeemed by divine 
 virtues. Shakespeare, like Rembrandt, has done 
 other and greater things; but he has never done 
 anything more delightful of its kind, nothing of 
 a more intimate and communicable charm. 
 
 After reading Romeo and Juliet through for 
 the hundredth time, I feel inclined to say that 
 the picture of Juliet in it, is finer than any worn- ,; 
 an's portrait ever painted by any other poet. ' 
 The Antigone of Sophocles has been inordinately 
 praised. But after all, what do we know of An- 
 tigone? that she was high-minded and coura- 
 geous; that she will bury her brother even 
 though her life pays the penalty, that she faced 
 the angry Creon and death with the same marble 
 resolve. But what else do we know of her? She 
 Is a mere stony outline when looked at side by 
 
 67 
 
The Woinen oj Shakespeare 
 
 « side with this living, breathing, palpitating Juliet. 
 Even the Gretchen of Goethe Is a simple sketch 
 in comparison. Gretchen Is loving, yes, and su- 
 perstitious; credulous and easily moved by those 
 she likes; but love is all her character; Its doubt, 
 her pathos; Its loss, her despair. Were It not 
 for the exquisite poetry with which Goethe has 
 clothed her (and higher poetry is not to be found 
 in literature), Gretchen would hardly deserve 
 her fame, so simple Is she, so insignificant. But 
 fthls Juliet is a living being, Infinitely more com- 
 plex and Intelligent, infinitely more Interesting 
 therefore than Gretchen or Francesca. 
 
 And the Nurse, the feminine counterpart of 
 Falstaff, what shall be said of the ever famous 
 Nurse?* No play outside Shakespeare can 
 boast of four such characters as Romeo and 
 Juliet, Mercutio and the Nurse. I will not go 
 through the play, scene by scene, and dissect 
 Juliet as I have dissected Julia, and as I am 
 about to dissect Portia and some other fascinat- 
 ing heroines; for the charm of Juliet does not lie 
 in her character, but in the fact that her character, 
 clear though its outlines are and finely modelled 
 
 * I look upon Dame Quickly as harflly more than an elab- 
 orate copy of the Nurse and Doll Tearsheet is only venality 
 incarnate in a telling name. There is no attempt to paint 
 the soul of either woman. 
 
 63 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 (as it is, is fused so to speak, in the furnace of t 
 first passion. Let us now see how Shakespeare 
 came to write this astonishing masterpiece. 
 
 The prose version of the story was published 
 by the Italian novelist, Bandello, in 1554. Al- 
 ready in this narrative we have Romeo's mentor, 
 Benvolio, who would throw the cold water of 
 reason on passion, and the Nurse; the chief inci- 
 dents, too, are here; the love at first sight, the 
 rope-ladder and Juliet's vision of the horrors of 
 the vault. 
 
 This story was turned into English verse by 
 Arthur Brooke in 1562; a prose translation ap- 
 peared in Painter's Palace of Pleasure in 1567. 
 Shakespeare, we are told, was acquainted with 
 both these versions; but the poem of Brooke was 
 virtually the sole source of his work. Brooke 
 had bettered Bandello; he had vivified the Italian 
 story by adding a series of homely English real- 
 istic traits to the chief characters: for example, 
 he turned the poison-seller into the desperate 
 Apothecary: in his poem, too, Romeo on hearing 
 of his banishment throws himself on the ground 
 and tears his hair: more imiportant still, Brooke 
 gives a vigorous realistic picture of the Nurse, in 
 especial he notes her garrulity about Juliet's 
 childhood; her acceptance of Romeo's gold and 
 
 69 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 her prompt desertion of his cause when he is 
 banished: that Is, the Nurse lives in Brooke's 
 poem just as Hotspur lived In English history 
 and tradition, and just as the Bastard lived in 
 The Troublesome Reign. Shakespeare annexed 
 the realistic traits, heightened their effect and 
 shed over them the magic of his divinely simple 
 poetry. But the realistic touches were given to 
 him and not Invented by him — all of which bears 
 out and confirms my view of his idealistic poetic 
 temperament. Mercutio, on the other hand, is 
 all his own; a side or mood of himself indeed; 
 blood-brother to the quick, witty Biron of Love's 
 Labour's Lost and to the talkative Gratiano of 
 The Merchant of Venice. 
 
 I But nothing can take our eyes away from 
 I Juliet: she holds the centre of the picture, and 
 her figure Is more Important than Romeo's. In 
 the Italian version of the story she was eighteen 
 years of age, but Brooke made her sixteen, and 
 Shakespeare with his terrible passionate sensu- 
 ality reduced this sixteen to fourteen. Those 
 who deny his extravagant sensuality will hardly 
 be able to deny that the gravest fault, perhaps 
 indeed, the only grave fault in his character- 
 drawing of Juliet is that he makes her talk far 
 more sensually than a maiden talks: 
 
 70 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. 
 Lovers can see to do their amorous rites 
 By their own beauties; or, if love be blind. 
 It best agrees with night. Come, civil night. 
 Thou sober-suited matron, all in black. 
 And learn me how to lose a winning match, 
 Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. . . . 
 
 The words sin against human nature In their sen- 
 suahty and boldness. Girls hardly ever say as 
 much as they think or feel; but this Juliet is as 
 outspoken as a young man : 
 
 O, I have bought the mansion of a love. 
 But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold. 
 Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day 
 As is the night before some festival. . . . 
 
 This passionate abandonment, however, adds in-i 
 tensity to the love-song and deepens the effect of j 
 its terror and tragedy. In everything else Juliet! 
 is natural enough for the purpose of the poem. 
 
 Strange to say, she is not so carefully Indi- 
 vidualized as Julia in The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona though she lives for us fnore intensely 
 by reason of her passion. The same model 
 served for both pictures; there is no trait in 
 Juliet which is not marked in Julia; but Shake- 
 speare was not so intent on giving us the portrait 
 of a living girl in Juliet as in painting once for all \ 
 the lovely, passionate girl of his ideal. 
 
 71 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 But how did he get this quality into the pic- 
 ture? — this throbbing passion, this grace, this 
 tenderness, this pride even; for Juliet is proud 
 'in her loyalty; she condemns the Nurse pitilessly 
 as soon as the Nurse is false to Romeo. Her con- 
 temptuous impatience of life, too, when she is 
 separated from the man she loves, redeems to 
 a certain extent her sensuality. I cannot help 
 thinking that Shakespeare got the fascination of 
 this play from the happy chance that just before 
 he wrote It he met the woman who was destined 
 to be the passion of his life. I am compelled to 
 call her Mary Fitton, though any other name of 
 a high-born woman would suit me as well. All 
 probabilities seem to be in favour of the assump- 
 tion that the one star of his Idolatry, his " dark 
 lady " of the Sonnets was Mary Fitton, who 
 came to be mald-of-honour to Queen Elizabeth 
 as a girl of sixteen In 1596.* She no doubt vis- 
 ited the theatre; It Is certain she knew Kemp, 
 the clown of Shakespeare's company; for he 
 ventured to dedicate a book to her somewhat 
 familiarly. Shakespeare had probably seen her 
 in 1596 and fallen In love with her at first sight: 
 
 * For proofs of this, one shuiild consult Mr. Tyler's work 
 on the Sonnets and for confirmation my book The Man 
 Shak9*'p$ar«. 
 
 72 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 in 1597 he knew her well. The enchantment she 
 cast upon him brought with it an entirely new 
 understanding of womanhood. He studied her 
 at first from a distance; but with love's Insight 
 and delight. The bare impression of her gave 
 life to his sketch of Julia; he painted her again 
 for us as Portia, this time superbly, but still from 
 the outside, the heart of her he did not know. 
 What was it like? At first, as we shall soon see, 
 she seemed to him careless, proud; for she stood 
 aloof and paid little attention to him. We have 
 her photograph as Rosaline In Romeo and Juliet. 
 But the poet could not help believing that her 
 heart was all he desired, perfect like her body, 
 and he painted her heart for us as he Imagined 
 It, In tender, proud, passionate Juliet, a child In 
 Innocent boldness, a woman In devoted tender- 
 ness, and all her qualities are quickened by youth's 
 impatience and love's delight, and death himself 
 has helped to make her Immortal; for us as for 
 Romeo : 
 
 . . . beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in lier lips and in her cheeks. 
 
 Shakespeare even found It possible to make her 
 passion virtuous: 
 
 . . . trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true^ 
 Than those that have more cunning to be stranp^^. . . , 
 
 73 
 
The Wo77ie7i oj Shakespeare 
 
 and as if this were not enough he gets the very \ 
 words that paint the trembhng heart of the girl 
 forever : 
 
 O God^ I have an ill-divining soul! 
 
 Thanks to his passion for Mary Fitton, and to 
 the glamour of his lyric poetry, the mere name 
 of Juliet has already borne for a dozen genera- ' 
 tions of men the imperishable significance, the 
 freshness and the honeyed sweetness of first love. 
 
 It now remains for me to show Juliet's rela- 
 tions to Shakespeare's mistress. The outward 
 presentment of Mary Fitton, the bodily image 
 of her, is not given us in Juliet but in Rosaline. 
 
 The first mention of Rosaline is in the first act 
 of Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo talks to Ben- 
 volio of his love. Here is the passage: 
 
 ... she'll not be hit 
 With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit; 
 And in strong proof of chastity well arm'd. 
 From love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd. 
 She will not stay the siege of loving terms, 
 Not bide the encounter of assailing eyes. 
 Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold; 
 O, she is rich in beauty, only poor 
 That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store. 
 
 The last couplet reminds one both of- Venus 
 and Adonis and the early sonnets. I find every 
 
 74 
 
 \ 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 word of this passage characteristic. It appears 
 from it that his love, who is likened to the proud 
 huntress Diana, torments Shakespeare-Romeo 
 with cold indifference. " She'll not be hit with 
 Cupid's arrow," he says; " she hath foresworn to 
 love "; but her aloofness, we learn, has limits: 
 
 She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair. 
 To merit bliss by making me despair. . . . 
 
 In the next talk with Benvolio which occurs a 
 scene or two later we get a little more informa- 
 tion. Benvolio says: 
 
 At this same ancient feast of Capulet's 
 Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovest. 
 With all the admired beauties of Verona: 
 Go thither; and, with unattainted eye. 
 Compare her face with some that I shall show. 
 And I will make thee think thy swan a crow. 
 
 In this " crow " we have the first allusion to 
 Mary Fitton's black hair and eyes. Benvolio 
 says a little later: 
 
 Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by . . . 
 
 But it is when Mercutio meets Romeo that we 
 get Rosaline's picture, a snapshot, so to speak: 
 
 I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes. 
 By her high forehead, and her scarlet lip, 
 By her fine foot, straight leg . . . 
 75 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 and so forth. Mercutio completed this first 
 sketch a little later: 
 
 Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, 
 Torments him so, that he will sure run mad. 
 
 and again: 
 
 Alas poor Romeo ! he is already dead ; stabbed 
 With a white wench's black eye. . . . 
 
 We get nothing more in this play, but as I 
 have shown elsewhere, this photograph is in 
 itself astonishing. Shakespeare indulges very 
 rarely in this physical portraiture of women or 
 men. We have a phrase or two about Falstaff's 
 appearance, a vague word or two about Ham- 
 let's; just a word about Julia's yellow hair and 
 " high " forehead, but nothing at all as complete 
 as this snapshot of Shakespeare's '' dark lady " 
 with her high forehead, scarlet lips, fine feet, 
 whitely complexion and black eyes. Yet Rosa- 
 line, who is pictured with this extraordinary par- 
 ticularity, has nothing to do with the play, never 
 appears in fact upon the stage, and is described 
 by secondary characters. The explanation of 
 these strange facts is that we have here the first 
 realistic portrait of Shakespeare's mistress, Mary 
 Fitton. 
 
 But how, one will ack, did he leave his love 
 76 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 Rosaline with a mere passing mention or so to 
 paint Juliet? It seems to me evident that he pic- 
 tured the outward presentment of Mistress Fit- 
 ton as Rosaline, but when he wrote Romeo and 
 Jidiet he only knew^ her slightly, and could still ^ 
 persuade himself that a loving, tender soul dwelt 
 In her fair body. He gave his Juliet the spirit 
 qualities he believed existed In Mary FItton. In 
 no other way can I explain Juliet's extravagant | 
 sensuality, which we noticed too In Julia and 
 which from this time on is a quality marked in 
 nearly all Shakespeare's heroines. Early in their 
 acquaintance he noticed the extraordinary sen- 
 suality in Mary FItton and was attracted by it 
 as we see from Juliet, imagining, no doubt, that it 
 I could be held to loyalty for one person. If this 
 \. guess of mine is correct, it will explain Juliet's 
 unbridled sensualism, which, as we shall soon 
 see, was allied with faithlessness in Mary FItton, 
 as indeed too often happens. If we don't accept 
 this conjecture we shall find it difficult to explain 
 the fact that Shakespeare has not given this ex- 
 cessive sensuality to any other of his earlier crea- 
 tions. 
 
 But the evidence of all this which is still to be 
 set forth is a thousand times more convincing 
 than any inferences that can be drawn from the 
 
 77 
 
The fFofnen of Shakespeare 
 
 realistic picture of Rosaline or from the practical 
 identity of the two idealistic portraits of the 
 same woman in Julia and Juliet. All Shake- 
 speare's works from the time he was thirty-two 
 or three to the day of his death bear the marks 
 of his passion for his dark mistress. People 
 seem to think that in saying this I am making 
 his life extraordinarily simple; but the life of the 
 emotions which is the heart of life to a poet, is 
 always very simple — a little vanity, a little striv- 
 ing, a little love and joy and jealousy — what 
 more is there in life for any of us? 
 
 Shakespeare pictures his love, Rosaline, for 
 us as very proud and chastely indifferent, and 
 photographs her, so to speak, at the same time 
 with high forehead, white skin, black hair and 
 black eyes. 
 
 At the very outset he notices her cold aloof- 
 ness, perhaps due to pride, perhaps to cunning; a 
 little later, her wantonness strikes him, and at 
 once he gives us two sorts of portraits of her. 
 At first, when he is happy, we have idealistic por- 
 traits such as Julia, Juliet, Portia, Beatrice and 
 Rosalind; when her lightness wounds him and 
 makes him jealous, we have realistic true por- 
 traits, such as the snapshot of Rosaline in Romeo 
 and Juliet, and the superb Rosaline again in 
 
 78 
 
Juliet: Porika: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost, But the same model 
 serves always; for the idealistic pictures he has 
 only to leave out his mistress' infidelity and lech- 
 ery, and make her tender, true, and loving; for 
 
 I the realistic portrait he has only to recall her sen- 
 sual vagrancy and we have the hard-hearted Ro- 
 saline of Romeo and Juliet and the more cruel, 
 though far completer portrait of the same Rosa- 
 
 ' line again in Love's Labour's Lost; but these are 
 all manifestly pictures of one and the same woman. 
 Thinking chiefly of sequence In time I should 
 perhaps first study the Rosaline of Love's La- 
 bour's Lost and then go on to Portia, Beatrice, 
 
 ; Rosalind and Viola; but the sequence in passion 
 
 ' induces me to put the Intenser and more detailed 
 portrait later. 
 
 ' First of all then let us get this Portia Into our 
 minds, for this was how Mary Fitton looked to 
 Shakespeare In the early days of their acquaint- 
 ance, or he would hardly have painted a finer 
 replica of Julia. 
 
 Portia Is at once a brilliant and careful study, 
 so careful indeed that It shows the poet was still 
 not quite sure of his own skill In Imaginative por- 
 traiture, but reproduced every gesture and word 
 of his model. Mistress Fitton had evidently 
 come to the theatre, and he had met her; he had 
 
 79 
 
The Women of Shakes .-^are 
 
 watched her laughing and talking condescend- 
 ingly to Kemp the clown or jesting wittily with 
 some of the young noblemen. Her pride, and 
 her familiar ways; her generosity, her high 
 spirits and temper were graven on his heart. Fie 
 would naturally believe, or at least try to per- 
 suade himself that she was also tender and true. 
 And this is what he does. 
 
 In all these attempts of mine to show how the 
 dramatic author works and how in the case of 
 women especially he gives us the impression of 
 having created half a dozen different characters, 
 whereas in reality he has been using variously a 
 few different features of the same person, half 
 my difficulty comes from the fact that the major- 
 ity of readers and nearly all my critics have 
 no understanding whatever of the creative gift. 
 They are blinded by names. Call a man Mac- 
 beth and make him commit murder after murder, 
 he is to them a cruel, ambitious murderer: call the 
 same person Hamlet, and he is a humane, self- 
 questioning, melancholy student-prince: they do 
 not want to recognize In the Macbeth they de- 
 test, the Hamlet they admire and love; though 
 the two are clearly one and the same person. 
 ^ It must be admitted, also, that the actor al- 
 ways differentiates characters rather by what 
 
 80 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 they do than by what they say: the positions and 
 acts — the externals — of the characters are to the 
 mummer all important, not what they say and 
 what they are. And the public are often deluded 
 Into accepting the personality of the actor or ac- 
 tress for that of the character he or she Is sup- 
 posed to assume. 
 
 But In spite of these deceptive circumstances 
 It should be possible for any good reader to con- 
 vince himself that Portia and Julia and Juliet 
 are one and the same character. Portia is the 
 most complex of the three: she Is a later study: 
 Shakespeare grows continually in knowledge of 
 his model. Yet if one put down all Portia's traits 
 there would only be some dozen or so In all. I 
 have already shown that In two features she Is 
 Julia : both Portia and Julia talk to their maids 
 about their suitors and plainly show who is the 
 man of their choice. Julia reproves her maid for 
 speaking grossly, and Portia reproves Gratlano 
 for the same reason : now to these traits let us add 
 others. Both are desperately In love and both 
 are quick to jealousy; both love music; both, too, 
 are generous In every sense of the word, and 
 above all both are good — heart-good and kind. 
 The trait Is more marked In Portia; she declares 
 she has never repented of a good deed — and 
 
 81 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Shakespeare uses his divine poetic gift to make 
 this goodness of Portia charming to us. The 
 candle shines in the dark, she says: 
 
 Like a good deed in a naughty world. 
 
 But all these traits of Portia are also noted in 
 Julia. Julia even recognizes her rival's good 
 qualities (not by any means an ordinary femi- 
 nine trait) and does her faithless lover's service. 
 How, then, do the two differ? Not one quality 
 is given to Portia which would be out of char- 
 acter if given to Julia. But there ought to be 
 half a dozen irreconcilable distinctions before 
 we talk of difference of character. The only dif- 
 ference I can think of is that Portia at first talks 
 suggestively to her maid, while Julia will not 
 allow the maid to talk suggestively to her. As 
 Shakespeare got to know his model, he found her 
 bolder of speech than he had thought seemly. 
 But this is only a difference of his knowledge and 
 not a difference in the nature of the girls, for 
 curiously enough Julia shows more sensuality 
 than even Portia. Of course I am alluding to 
 the scene in which after reading the letter, she 
 puts the name of Proteus, on the name of Julia, 
 and tells them to 
 
 . . . kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will. 
 82 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 Clearly these two girls are one and the same per- 
 son, or rather as I have said, the one girl has 
 been the model for both pictures, of which Por- 
 tia is the better and later portrait. 
 
 I may also just note here that Portia has some 
 traits which are used again In the painting of 
 Helena in All's Well: she has also traits in com- 
 mon with the Rosaline of Love's Labour's Lost. 
 
 A good adversary might urge that I have still 
 not convinced him. Shakespeare's love, Rosa- 
 line, he might say, like the " dark lady " of the 
 sonnets has a white skin and black hair and 
 black eyes; whereas this Julia describes herself 
 as having yellow hair and grey-blue eyes: and 
 Portia also has golden hair. How can these dif- 
 ferences be explained? Every dramatic writer 
 know^s that such physical differences count for 
 less than similarity of temperament. As Leo- 
 nardo da Vinci says: " For the form we go to 
 Nature and use observation, for the soul we look 
 Into our own hearts." Shakespeare may not have 
 wished at first to be detected in painting his love 
 over and over again in every drama. Accord- 
 ingly, while he describes her nature In Julia and 
 Portia and Idealizes her, he gives her now yellow 
 hair and grey-blue eyes, and now golden hair In- 
 stead of black. But when he has to show what she 
 
 S3 
 
The IFomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 is and how she speaks, he cannot help betraying 
 himself by painting continually the woman he loves. 
 
 Such identity of character in various heroines is 
 only to be explained by Ignorance or by a pas- 
 sionate obsession. Everyone has seen a pair of 
 sisters who are very much alike. So long as you 
 don't know them, you take them for twins, but as 
 soon as you know them, you begin to wonder at 
 your former blindness; they differ In a hundred 
 ways. In a short time you see that they are not 
 even like each other. With a little trouble you 
 could enumerate a hundred differences of face and 
 form, and the same observation holds true In 
 stronger measure with regard to the mind. It Is 
 only ignorance that sees Identity. No two leaves 
 of an oak tree are alike, much less two sister 
 minds: looked at Intently they differ In every re- 
 spect. Let's be honest with ourselves. Portia 
 even Is a very rudimentary and simple study. 
 She is not to be compared for complexity with 
 Charles Reade's Margaret. Portia's beauty and 
 magic are In Shakespeare's poetry, and not In 
 his revelation of her character. What traits she 
 does possess are those of Julia and Juliet. 
 
 The Important thing to remember Is that not- 
 withstanding the success of the picture Shake- 
 sgeare has not given us in Portia the heart of his 
 
 84 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 mistress: trait after trait he marks but no faults; 
 the figure casts no shadow and is therefore in so 
 far unreal. We never know Portia as we know, 
 for instance, the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. 
 The truth, of course, is that Portia is only half 
 the woman; Mary Fitton's lecherous, change- 
 loving temperament which is the natural com- 
 plement of Portia's passionate sensuality and 
 love of suggestive talk is not only ignored, but is 
 transmuted into tender loyalty and devotion. 
 Portia's humility, too, and her desire to be mar- 
 ried are merely usual maiden qualities, and not 
 borrowed from Mistress Fitton, consequently the 
 soul-painting is not only superficial, but a little 
 unsteady and unsatisfactory. 
 
 When Shakespeare next uses this model in Bea- 
 trice * he has become familiar with it and gets 
 closer to it and to life; he gives Beatrice fewer 
 traits than he accumulated in Portia, but the art 
 is more masterly, the deep-graven features count 
 doubly, and Beatrice — thanks at first to her 
 scornful, teasing self-assurance and later to her 
 passionate defence of Hero, her bitter condemna- 
 tion of Claudio, and the high, imperious spirit 
 she shows to Benedick ("Kill Claudio!" she 
 
 * Coleridge noticed that Beatrice and Julia were very much 
 alike. 
 
 S5 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 cries to him) — lives for us more clearly, more 
 vitally than Portia herself. Beatrice has been 
 given Mary FItton's desperate, passionate temper 
 (" I would eat his heart In the market-place," Is 
 her word) and Mary FItton's proud self-centred- 
 ness Instead of Portia's humility and cheap desire 
 to be married, and the realistic, natural traits 
 taken from the great model, lend pulsing blood 
 to Benedick's mistress: she Is a finer, truer pic- 
 ture of Mary FItton than Juliet or Portia. 
 
 Beatrice Is a far better portrait even than Ro- 
 salind. As Shakespeare created Beatrice with 
 Portia's wit and vivacity adding deep shadows 
 of extravagant pride and temper, so he created 
 Rosalind with Portia's love and tenderness add- 
 ing merely touches of archness, but the too great 
 sweet Is Inclined to cloy. How hard put to It 
 Shakespeare Is to differentiate between his hero- 
 ines, or even to find an Individual trait (not bor- 
 rowed from his mistress) for any one of them, 
 can be seen In this Rosalind. She Is very loving, 
 generous, and Impatient as are Julia, Juliet and 
 Portia. It Is the same nature without the sug- 
 gestive speech, though Rosalind, too, thinks that 
 " time trots hard with a young maid between the 
 contract of her marriage and the day it Is sol- 
 emnized." 
 
 86 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 Her famous talk of love In the third act be- 
 trays Shakespeare's method. In Much Ado he 
 makes Benedick talk of love with Don Pedro, 
 who says that he will see him look pale with 
 love. 
 
 Benedick answers : Rosalind says : 
 
 With anger, with sick- Love is merely a mad- 
 ness, or with hunger, my ness, and I tell you, de- 
 lord, not with love: prove serves as well a dark house 
 that ever I lose more blood and a whip as madmen do ; 
 with love than I will get and the reason why they 
 again with drinking, pick are not so punished and 
 out mine eyes with a bal- cured is, that the lunacy is 
 lad-monger's pen and so ordinary that the whip- 
 hang me up at the door pers are in love too. Yet I 
 of a brothel-house for the profess curing it by coun- 
 sign of blind Cupid. sel. 
 
 That is, Shakespeare gives his own thought 
 
 now to Benedick, now to Rosalind. But the words 
 
 that live and throb and burn for us in his women 
 
 characters are always derived from his " dark 
 
 lady," his own passion coming to utterance again 
 
 and again. For instance, Rosalind reproves 
 
 Phebe, Phebe who scorns Sllvius — and this is the 
 
 way she does it. Every word lives, because every 
 
 word is really addressed by Shakespeare to his 
 
 scornful mistress : 
 
 . . . What though you have no beauty, — 
 As, by my faith, I see no more in you. 
 Than without candle may go dark to bed — 
 Must you be therefore proud and pitiless } . . . . 
 
 87 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 " Proud and pitiless " is appropriate when ad- 
 dressed to the scornful maid-of-honour, the 
 "dark lady" of the sonnets; but verges on the 
 ridiculous when used to the shepherdess. Then, 
 too, we have the portrait of the maid-of-honour; 
 for Rosalind goes on: 
 
 'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair. 
 Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream. 
 That can entame my spirits to your worship. . . . 
 
 Surely this is Rosaline again whom Mercutio 
 spoke of as the " white wench " with the " black 
 eyes." Rosalind proceeds to scold Silvius and 
 then Phebe : 
 
 You are a thousand times a properer man 
 Than she a woman: 'tis such fools as you 
 That makes the world full of ill-favoured children. 
 'Tis not her glass^ but yuu^ that flatters her. . . . 
 But, mistress know yourself: down on your knees 
 And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love: 
 For I must tell you friendly in your ear. 
 Sell when you can : you are not for all markets. 
 Cry the man mercy; love him; take his offer: 
 Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer. . . . 
 
 How often in his heart did Shakespeare cry to 
 Mary Fitton: "You are the light of the world 
 to me, but to me only: you are not for all markets. 
 I am a thousand times a properer man than you a 
 woman** The fact that Phebe falls in love with 
 
 88 
 
Juliet: Portia: Beatrice: Rosalind: Viola 
 
 the youth who scolds and despises her, shows that 
 Shakespeare even when most In love knew a good 
 deal about the " madding fever." 
 
 The whole tirade Is astonishing In Its realistic 
 passion, and Its truth makes Rosalind live for us 
 In spite of the fact that otherwise her character Is 
 very poorly drawn. For the heart of the matter 
 Is that there are no faults at all In her, and there- 
 fore In spite of the fact that her portrait Is by 
 far the more elaborate of the two, Beatrice with 
 her Imperious, desperate temper (borrowed from 
 Mary FItton) Is the more convincing creation. 
 
 In so far as Viola has any character at all she 
 rather resembles Ophelia In patient resignation. 
 When Twelfth Night was written, Shakespeare 
 was beginning to take a more serious view of 
 life. The three comedies we are now consider- 
 ing, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It 
 and Twelfth Night, all belong to the honeyed 
 summer-time of Shakespeare's life when his 
 faculties had reached maturity and yet were ex- 
 ercised with the ease and joy that tell of youth? 
 ful hope and vigour. They were all written be- 
 tween 1598 and 1600; in the first sweet years of 
 his love for Mary FItton, when he was still under 
 the spell of her proud, witty, and self-confident 
 beauty and could still persuade himself that at 
 
 89 
 
The JVoinen of Shakespeare 
 
 least she loved him better than she loved any one 
 else, and might yet love him to the exclusion of 
 all other men. About this time he says in a 
 sonnet : 
 
 For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart 
 Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. 
 
 90 
 
CHAPTER y 
 
 THE GREAT PHOTOGRAPH OF HIS LOVE: LOVE's 
 
 labour's lost: Rosaline again 
 
 T MUST now turn from these Idealistic por- 
 traits of Mary FItton and retrace my steps 
 a year or two In order to study the first great 
 realistic portrait which Shakespeare painted of 
 his mistress. The likeness of Rosaline In Love's 
 Labour's Lost Is bitten In for us with the acid of 
 jealous passion. Minor poets and literary dilet- 
 tanti, such as Mr. Andrew Lang, have found In 
 this fact a reason to reject my whole story. If 
 Shakespeare, they argue, had Indeed discovered 
 as early as Christmas 1597 (when Love's La- 
 bour's Lost was revised) that his love was faith- 
 less to him (and we will call her Mistress Mary 
 FItton to please Mr. Harris's childish need of 
 names), how Is It that afterwards In 1598 and 
 1599 he climbed the heights of joy In the three 
 great comedies. Much Ado, As You Like It, and 
 Twelfth Night? 
 
 The objection only shows where my critics 
 91 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 stand. Life appears to be a closed door to nine 
 out of ten of them. They have no experience of 
 passion whatever; no more knowledge of love 
 apparently than if they had no hearts at all. 
 
 Mary FItton changed the world for Shake- 
 speare; gave him golden days of tenderness and 
 divine hours of delight. True, he found out 
 very quickly that she was a wanton; but that did 
 not diminish the sweetness of her kisses to him. 
 Probably even, gentle as he was, it intensiiied 
 his passion. And when she was faithless to him 
 he grew wild with rage and jealousy. This sharp 
 alternation of joy and bitterness, idealistic ad- 
 miration and realistic contempt; this ebb and 
 flow is the very sign of a supreme passion, Its 
 mark and method. In due course we shall find 
 that these alternations gradually waned out In the 
 course of years Into an ever-increasing bitterness. 
 
 Let me now go back and consider, feature by 
 feature, the first great photograph of Shake- 
 peare's mistress. She appears in Lovers La- 
 bourns Lost and Is again called Rosaline. This 
 Rosaline is described In the comedy with such 
 particularity; we are given so many details both 
 of body and soul, that it Is impossible to doubt 
 the sincerity and fidelity of the portrait. I have 
 already pointed out that for fewer and weaker 
 
 92 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 ^ reasons, one is compelled to believe that the pic- 
 jture of Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet is a snap- 
 v^hot, so to speak, of Mary Fitton. A dozen 
 rpeculiarities, such as a white complexion, high 
 forehead and black hair and eyes for the out- 
 ward, and hardness of heart, word-wit, and a dis- 
 position to torture her lover for the spirit, are 
 enough traits when taken together with other pe- 
 culiar features, to establish her identity. But 
 here we have not a dozen peculiarities as in the 
 case of Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet, but a hun- 
 dred, and all astonishing. 
 
 I shall make no excuse for carrying these in- 
 vestigations into minute details and repetitions, 
 for this is the heart of my study, and I want to 
 convince the fair-minded reader that on this point 
 doubt is impossible. And even here I must skip 
 almost as many proofs as I shall use. 
 
 First of all let us fix the date. Lovers La- 
 bourns Lost was revised and expanded by Shake- 
 speare most carefully for a performance before 
 the Queen at Whitehall w^hich took place as a 
 part of the Christmas festivities in 1597. The 
 figures of BIron and Rosaline were then no 
 doubt redrawn and their relations defined. 
 
 Biron, as I have show^n elsewhere, is an excel- 
 lent portrait of Shakespeare himself; but there is 
 
 
The JFomen of Shakespeare 
 
 very little characterization in the other person- 
 ages. The king and his lords are all witty, amor- 
 ous, talkative; in fact more or less mouthpieces 
 of the poet. The Princess of France, and her 
 ladies, are not differenced In any way; they are 
 mere lay figures to show off Shakespeare's wit. 
 The puerility of the character-drawing is ex- 
 traordinary, except in the case of Biron and still 
 more in that of Rosaline, who is pictured to the 
 finger-tips. 
 
 Rosaline is made to praise Biron, before he 
 appears, as a merry man and a most excellent 
 talker; and when they m.eet they indulge in a 
 tourney of wit, in which Rosaline more than 
 holds her own, showing indeed astounding self- 
 assurance, spiced with a little contempt of Biron; 
 \^Mercutio called her, it will be remembered, 
 " hard-hearted." Every word in this first en- 
 counter 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. 
 Ros. Not till it leave the rider in the mire. 
 Biron. What time o' day ? }, 
 
 Ros. The hour that fools should ask. f 
 
 94 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 BmoN. Now fair befall your mask ! 
 Ros. Fair fall the face it covers ! 
 BiRON. And send you many lovers ! 
 Ros. Amen, so you be none. 
 BiRON. Nay, then will I be gone. 
 
 This Is surely the same Rosaline whom Romeo 
 describes for us: 
 
 . . . She'll not be hit 
 With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit. 
 
 The parting of the two is a replica of their 
 meeting, and need not be reproduced. Rosaline 
 shows herself as witty as Biron, but while Shake- 
 speare-Biron makes up to her, she scorns him. 
 Biron retires, but before he goes off altogether, 
 he cannot help questioning the French lord 
 Boyet about Rosaline and the three or four 
 points of similarity which we have already no- 
 ticed are materially increased: 
 
 Biron. What's her name in the cap.f* 
 
 BoYET. Rosaline, by good hap. 
 
 Biron. Is she wedded or no? 
 
 Boyet. To her will, sir, or so. 
 
 Now this " to her will, sir, or so " might have 
 been taken from the sonnets. The " dark lady " 
 of the sonnets was " rich in will," we know. Son- 
 net 135 begins: 
 
 Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will, 
 And Will to boot and Will in overplus. 
 95 
 
The JVomen of Shakespeare 
 
 Now In the play this touch Is extraordinarily 
 significant, for Shakespeare's maids are not usu- 
 ally wedded to their " will " In any sense, much 
 less In the various senses in which he uses the 
 word /'will"; for Shakespeare understands 
 " will " in the usual sense and also In the sense of 
 desire and of course as a proper name. 
 
 The next time we meet Biron in the play we 
 find that he has written a sonnet to Rosaline and 
 this Is the way he describes her to Costard: 
 
 When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name. 
 And Rosaline they call her ; ask for her. 
 
 In fact, Shakespeare takes care to explain to 
 us why he has selected this name Rosaline for his 
 love In two different plays. 
 
 We are told, too, that BIron gives Costard a 
 shilling for carrying the sonnet, a sum about 
 equivalent to ten shillings of our money. Biron 
 was evidently as free-handed as Shakespeare 
 himself. 
 
 As soon as Costard goes off after receiving, as 
 he says, " 'leven pence farthing better " than 
 what he regards as " remuneration," BIron in- 
 dulges In a long characteristic soliloquy: 
 
 And I, forsooth in love ! I, that have been love's whip ; 
 A very beadle to a humorous sigh; .... 
 
 96 
 
 I 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 and so on for a dozen lines or more : then again 
 he exclaims : 
 
 What ! I love ! I sue ! I seek a wife ! 
 
 A woman, that is like a German clock. . . . 
 
 And so on and on. 
 
 All this is eminently and peculiarly character- 
 istic of young Shakespeare. A little before this 
 he was a lord of love, taming shrews and making 
 his heroines run after his vagrant heroes : now 
 the inconstant hero himself is limed hand and 
 foot and strives in vain to free himself. 
 
 What does Biron think of his charmer? He 
 tells us in a monologue, and uses words so unex- 
 pected, so out of keeping with the play that we 
 are compelled to regard them as a deliberate 
 painting by Shakespeare of his mistress at this 
 time, when he is evidently vexed by her coldness 
 or unfaithfulness. Biron says: 
 
 Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all; 
 And, among three, to love the worst of all ; 
 A whitely wanton with a velvet brow. 
 With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes; 
 Ay, and, by heaven, one that v/ill do the deed 
 Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard: 
 And I to sigh for her ! to watch for her ! 
 To pray for her ! Go to ; it is a plague 
 That Cupid will impose for my neglect 
 Of his almighty dreadful little might. 
 Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue and groan: 
 Some men must love my body and some Joan. 
 97 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Shakespeare, as we know, was " perjured " In 
 loving Mary FItton, for he was already married 
 and he makes the same accusation against him- 
 self in sonnet 152, where he calls himself, " per- 
 jured." But the identification of BIron with 
 Shakespeare, is not so astonishing as this de- 
 scription of the '' dark lady," Mary FItton. 
 First of all, among the three maidens of the prin- 
 cess, BIron says he loves " the worst of all." 
 This brings us up with a jerk. We had thought 
 all the ladles good; besides a man as a rule be- 
 lieves his love Is best of all, but BIron describes 
 Rosaline as '' the worst of all." This is a blot 
 on the play. It diminishes our interest in Rosa- 
 line as a heroine and In BIron and In the play. 
 But BIron not only asserts plainly that his love 
 Is a wanton, which a man would hardly confess 
 to himself, but he repeats the charge and black- 
 ens it: 
 
 Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed 
 Though Argus* were her eunuch and her guard. 
 
 All the characteristics of Rosaline in Romeo and 
 Juliet are here repeated with emphasis and with 
 completer knowledge. And the spiritual Identi- 
 
 * In the pretended quarrel in the last act of The Merchant 
 of Venice Portia warns Bassanio that she is not to be trusted; 
 Lie not a night from home: watch me hke Argus. 
 
 98 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 ficatlon is not more complete than the bodily 
 Identification. 
 
 Mercutio tells us that Rosaline was " a white 
 wench " with " black eyes "; BIron describes her 
 here as: 
 
 A whitely wanton with a velvet brow. 
 
 With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes. 
 
 Rosalind's words In As You Like It, Act III, 
 scene v, are just as precise: 
 
 'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair, 
 Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream. . . . 
 
 And soon we shall see from sonnet 127 that 
 Shakespeare describes his dark mistress In the 
 same way: 
 
 . . . my mistress' brows are raven black, 
 Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem. 
 
 As we have already remarked, Shakespeare 
 has not painted any character for us in any play 
 with this photographic exactitude. Such paint- 
 ing, too. Is totally out of place In a play. The 
 contrast, moreover, between this detailed bodily 
 description of Rosaline and the other characters 
 IS extraordinary. No other character In the play 
 is described at all. They are mere witty, heed- 
 
 99 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 less, playful, lay figures, but Biron lives for us, 
 though we don't know what he was like physi- 
 cally, but we know this Rosaline already as if we 
 had met her, as if she were one of our intimates. 
 Among the lifeless masks she fairly startles us 
 with her living, breathing reality. 
 
 Now all these extraordinary particulars com- 
 bine to prove that in Biron and Rosaline we have 
 speaking portraits of Shakespeare and his love, 
 Mary Fitton. The effect of each piece of evi- 
 dence is cumulative and the weight of each piece 
 is enormously increased by its peculiarity. I 
 venture to say that the person who can still doubt 
 is incapable of weighing evidence and the mul- 
 tiple effect of such details. 
 
 Another circumstance makes this cruel photo- 
 graph of Rosaline more interesting still to us. 
 This play was given at Whitehall, Christmas, 
 1597. Mary Fitton would almost certainly be 
 among the ladies of Elizabeth's court who list- 
 ened to it. Shakespeare and his fellows would 
 be playing in it; perhaps, indeed, Shakespeare 
 himself took the part of Biron and described 
 Mary Fitton to her face so exactly that many 
 persons must have recognized her and understood 
 both his love for her and the accusation he 
 brought against her. The only possible explana- 
 
 100 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 tion is twofold. First of all Shakespeare's pas- 
 sioiji had already reached the intensity of a sex- 
 duel. His mistress had tormented him so that 
 he delights in calling her " wanton " to her face 
 in public, when one would have expected from 
 the gentle Shakespeare all sorts of high-flown 
 compliments and endearing courtesies. The sec- 
 ond part of the explanation is no less certain; in 
 the court at that time the accusation of lightness 
 brought against a maid-of-honour must have 
 been taken very lightly. Shakespeare is so hurt 
 that he cannot help telling the truth about his 
 mistress; * it will not be regarded, however, as a 
 dishonouring charge, but a charge at which one 
 laughs, much in the same way as one would laugh 
 to-day, if a girl were accused of being overfond 
 of dancing. When Mary Fitton, a little later, 
 bore an illegitimate child to Lord William Her- 
 bert the affair was apparently passed over with 
 indifference; she was not dismissed or disgraced, 
 as with our ideas we might have expected. But 
 though in that court an accusation of wantonness 
 would merely cause amusement, Shakespeare 
 used it seriously; he meant to wound with it. 
 
 * In sonnet 140 he warns her not to drive him to despair or 
 ... I should grow mad 
 And in my madness might speak ill of thee. 
 
 101 
 
The JFomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 Nothing could show the extremity of his passion 
 more clearly. 
 
 Now we come almost immediately to another 
 series of proofs. Shakespeare at thirty-three was 
 one of the best heads in the world. He knew 
 perfectly well when he had made things clear to 
 us, and when he repeats the same features again 
 and again with needless iteration it is safe to say 
 that he had some personal reason for it. It is 
 not a merit in dramatic art; but here, though he 
 has already painted Rosaline for us with heavy 
 brush-strokes, giving an infatuated young man's 
 opinion of her in the harshest words, he goes on 
 to repeat the strokes again and again and again, 
 as he never repeats them in any other play. His 
 desire to expose his mistress is so extraordinary 
 that It has the same effect as If he had resolved to 
 tell us that this Rosaline was the one love of his 
 life and she was a harlot. 
 
 The next time we meet Rosaline she has a bout 
 of word-fence with the French lord Boyet, just 
 as she has had twice already with Biron, and this 
 time the contest of wits ends suggestively: 
 
 Ros. Thou canst not hit it^, hit it, hit it. 
 
 Thou canst not hit it, my good man. 
 Boyet. An I cannot, cannot, cannot. 
 
 An I cannot, another can. . . . 
 102 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 This merry and suggestive riposte no doubt 
 brought down the house, for the suggestion is 
 carried still further in the remainder of the 
 scene. Here we have the explanation of the ex= 
 traordinary and confessed sensuality of Julia, 
 Juliet, Portia and the rest: Mary Fitton-Rosa- 
 line with her bold speech was the model. 
 
 Tht third scene of the fourth act opens with 
 a long soliloquy of Biron which is astoundingly 
 sincere and realistic. 
 
 The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing my- 
 self: they have pitched a toil; I am toiling in a pitch, — 
 pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word. Well, set thee 
 down, sorrow! for so they say the fool said, and so say 
 I, and I the fool: well proved, wit! By the Lord, this 
 love is as mad as Ajax; it kills sheep; it kills me, I a 
 sheep : well proved again o' my side ! I will not love : if 
 I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O, but her eye, — 
 by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her ; yes, 
 for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but 
 lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven I do love; and it 
 hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy; and 
 here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. 
 Well, she hath one o' my sonnets already: the clown 
 bore it, the fool sent it, and lady hath it: sweet clown, 
 sweeter fool, sweetest lady ! . . . 
 
 One has only to look at this to see how the 
 touches already given are multiplied. Biron be- 
 ! gins with a word-play on " pitch," plainly taking 
 I us back to his " whitely wanton: " 
 
 With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eywi. 
 103 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Then this soliloquy with its expression *' de- 
 file " and " foul word " reminds us of sonnet 
 148, where he speaks of his mistress' " foul 
 faults." This Biron rages against himself as no 
 doubt Shakespeare raged: "I will not love;" 
 but it is her eyes that make him love, those black 
 eyes that he talks of again and again in the very 
 first sonnet (127) addressed to his " dark lady " ; 
 the eyes he compares to that *' full star that 
 ushers in the even." 
 
 In this soliloquy, too, we learn that Biron 
 wrote sonnets to Rosaline and sent them to her, 
 just as Shakespeare no doubt sent the sonnets he 
 had written about her to Mary Fitton. i 
 
 Then Biron stands aside while the King and 
 other gentlemen come in without seeing him and j 
 confess their love. Biron has a few lines of 
 comment, in which we could swear Falstaff was jj 
 speaking. The resemblance is so extraordinary jj 
 that though it is outside my subject for the mo- j 
 ment, I must give it; when Longaville reads his 
 sonnet, which by the way Is very brother to 
 Biron's sonnet, Biron says: 
 
 This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity 
 A green goose, a goddess: pure, pure idolatry. 
 God amend us, God amend! we are much out o* the 
 way. . . . 
 
 104 
 
 \ 
 
Lovers Labour's Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 i little later on this Biron shows that all the de- 
 iiigrations showered on Rosaline are mere evi- 
 dence of passion. As soon as Biron's love is 
 about to be discovered, he avows it boldly, calls 
 his mistress " heavenly Rosaline " and praises 
 her exactly as Shakespeare afterwards in his 
 proper person praises the " dark lady " in the 
 sonnets : he declares that every one must bow 
 their vassal heads before " the heaven of her 
 brow " and talks about her '' majesty," just as 
 in sonnet 150 he talks about her "powerful 
 might." It w^as the " strength " of Mary Fit- 
 ton's personality which made the deepest impres- 
 sion on our poet. The next moment Biron gives 
 the best and strongest proof of love. His mis- 
 tress can stand being seen as she is. He says: 
 
 Fie painted rhetoric! O she needs it not: 
 To things of sale a seller's praise belongs. 
 She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot. . . . 
 
 In sonnet 130, too, we have the same perfect 
 sincerity, the very habit of intense passion: 
 
 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. . . . 
 
 The King then describes this Rosaline and pro- 
 
 105 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 tests that she is not beautiful; in sonnet 148 we 
 are told " the world " says she is not fair. 
 The dialogue goes on: 
 
 King. By Heaven, thy love is black as ebony. 
 
 BiRON. Is ebony like her? O wood divine! 
 O wife of such wood were felicity. 
 O, who can give an oath.'* where is a book? 
 That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack 
 If that she learn not of her eye to look: 
 No face is fair that is not full so black. 
 
 King. O paradox ! Black is the badge of hell. 
 
 The hue of dungeons and the suit of night; 
 And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well. 
 
 BiRON. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. 
 O, if in black my lady's brows be deek'd, 
 It mourns that painting and usurping hair 
 Should ravish doters with a false aspect; 
 And therefore is she born to make black fair. . . 
 
 All this is exactly like the sonnets: take the first 
 sonnet to the " dark lady" (127), the first line 
 runs: 
 
 In the old age black was not counted fair. . . . 
 
 The Identical traits are simply numberless and 
 are often of the very soul. There Is no quality 
 more clearly marked In Shakespeare, not even 
 his love of music and flowers, than his contempt 
 for women who paint and make themselves up. 
 Mary Fitton was apparently too proud of her 
 youth and too conscious of her beauty to use ar- 
 
 106 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 tifice to improve it. We find the trait for the 
 first time here in Shakespeare-Biron. Biron jibes 
 at the other lords : 
 
 Your mistresses dare never come in rain. 
 
 For fear their colours should be wash'd away. . . . 
 
 The King retorts: 
 
 'Twere good, yours did ; for, sir, to tell you plain 
 I'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day. 
 
 It is evident that Mary Fitton disdained to paint 
 or do herself up or bother about putting on false 
 " usurping " hair. The trait appealed intensely 
 to Shakespeare, for he recurs to it again and 
 again. In Hamlet he naturally handles it most 
 frequently and frankly. Hamlet says to 
 Ophelia : 
 
 I have heard of your paintings too, well enough, 
 God has given you one face and you make yourself* 
 another. ... 
 
 and again at the end: 
 
 Let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. 
 
 In Measure for Measure Shakespeare goes a 
 little further: 
 
 Your whores, sir, . . . using painting. 
 Do prove my occupation a mystery; 
 
 107 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 and in Timon further still: Timon tells Phrynia 
 and Timandra to paint till : 
 
 ... a horse may mire upon your face. 
 
 The love of truth and simplicity abode with 
 Shakespeare to the end. 
 
 In the time of Elizabeth it was the custom for 
 all poets and courtiers to praise red hair and a 
 fair complexion as flunkey-compliments to the 
 Queen; but covered by the cloak of anonymity, 
 Shakespeare will prove to us that he thinks his 
 mistress' black hair more beautiful than red. 
 This passage is intensely significant to those who 
 understand Shakespeare's snobbishness. Biron 
 says : 
 
 Her favour turns the fashion of the days. 
 For native blood is counted painting now; 
 And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise, 
 Paints itself black, to imitate her brow. . . . 
 
 There can be no lingering doubt in any fair 
 mind that in this Rosaline of Romeo and Juliet 
 and of Lovers Labour's Lost, Shakespeare is de- 
 scribing his mistress, the " dark lady " of the 
 second sonnet-series and describing her against 
 his custom in play-writing, even more exactly 
 than he described her in the lyrics. Call her by 
 what name you will, that fact at any rate is estab- 
 lished. 
 
 108 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 Strange to say her chief bodily peculiarities 
 are given far more precisely in Love's Labour's 
 Lost than they are given in the sonnets, though 
 In the play such bodily description is wholly out 
 of place, whereas it adds intimacy and veracity 
 to the lyric poems. The explanation of the ar- 
 tistic blunder Is simple: Love's Labour's Lost is 
 earlier than the sonnets. When Shakespeare 
 first met Mary Fitton he could not help describ- 
 ing her even In the plays: she had taken all his 
 senses captive. 
 
 We know this Rosaline sufficiently, one would 
 imagine In these first four acts, through the pas- 
 sion of BIron and the descriptions given by him 
 and by the king and by the other gentlemen, but we 
 are to have still another replica of her portrait, 
 this time by the ladies of the Princess. Rosaline 
 banters Katharine and Katharine answers her: 
 
 .... had she been light, like you 
 Of such a merry, nimble stirring spirit. 
 She might ha' been a grandam ere she died: 
 And so may you, for a light heart lives long. 
 Ros. What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light 
 
 word? 
 Kath. a light* condition in a beauty dark. . . . 
 
 * Portia, too, plays on this word "light": 
 
 Let me give light, but let me not be light. 
 I mention this just to show that the same words come to 
 Shakespeare's mind whenever he is thinking of love. 
 
 109 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 And as If this " lightness of character " in a 
 dark beauty had not been drummed into us often 
 enough it is repeated again : 
 
 Ros. Look^ what you do, you do it still i' the dark. 
 Kath. So do not you, for you are a light wench. . . . 
 
 Now this Rosaline tells us a little more about 
 Biron: he has praised her, she says, as if she 
 were the fairest goddess: 
 
 I am compared to twenty thousand fairs. 
 
 O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter ! 
 Prin. Anything like? 
 Ros. Much in the letters; nothing in the praise. . . . 
 
 It is as if Shakespeare, speaking through Rosa- 
 line, had gone out of his way to assure us that 
 what he as Biron has said of Rosaline is exactly 
 true; but Indeed in this scene alone there are a 
 hundred proofs of the similitude of his portrait. 
 Rosaline declares that men are fools to pur- 
 chase mocking as Biron does and she goes on: 
 
 That same Biron I'll torture ere I go; 
 
 How I would make him fawn and beg and seek, 
 And wait the season and observe the times. 
 And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes, 
 And shape his service wholly to my hests. 
 And make him proud to make me proud that jests! . . . . 
 
 Surely It Is true that his love made Shakespeare 
 
 110 
 
Lovers Labour's Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 beg and fawn and spend his prodigal wits in boot- 
 less rhymes, and surely he was " proud to make 
 her proud." The whole description is astonish- 
 ing in its cruel veracity. 
 The princess says : 
 
 None are so surely caught, when they a^e catch'd 
 As wit turn'd fool. . . . 
 
 And Rosaline answers her: 
 
 The blood of youth burns not with such excess 
 As gravity's revolt to wantonness. 
 
 Now here is one more indubitable proof that 
 Shakespeare when writing about Biron's passion 
 is really writing about his own. Biron is pic- 
 tured as young again and again in the play; he 
 has never been distinguished for '' gravity " but 
 for talkativeness and wit. The princess calls him 
 " quick Biron ": Rosaline herself has told us that 
 he is witty and talkative. The two lines are 
 surely Shakespeare criticizing himself. When he 
 revised this play at thirty-three he thought him- 
 self old. Just as he calls himself old in the mag- 
 nificent sonnet which begins : 
 
 That time of year thou raayst in me behold 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang. 
 
 in 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 When he wrote this sonnet at thirty-three or 
 thirty-four he did seem old no doubt in compari- 
 son to Mary Fitton who was only nineteen. 
 That's what he is thinking of when he makes 
 Rosaline talk out of character of Biron's love as 
 *' gravity's revolt to wantonness." 
 
 There are still more proofs in this play that 
 Shakespeare has painted himself and his love for 
 us under the names of Biron and Rosaline. A 
 little later Biron tells her that he will do any- 
 thing for her: and Rosaline, by way of answer 
 to this declaration, calls for music, for no earthly 
 reason save that all Shakespeare's favourite 
 characters ask for music. When the " dark 
 lady " played to him he called her " my music." 
 
 iVgain and again Biron declares his devotion 
 while Rosaline mocks him : 
 
 Biron. O, I am yours, and all that I possess! 
 Ros. All the fool mine.'' 
 
 At length he drops all affectation and humour 
 and jesting and comes to plain words: 
 
 Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd 
 In russet yeas and honest kersey noes: 
 And, to begin, wench — so God help me, la ! — 
 My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw, 
 Ros. Sans sans I pray you. 
 112 
 
 I 
 
Lovers Labour s Lost: Rosaline Again 
 
 BIron replies out of Shakespeare's very soul: 
 
 . . . Yet I have a trick 
 
 Of the old rage: bear with me, I am sick; 
 
 I'll leave it by degrees . . . 
 
 Shakespeare-BIron is speaking here more truly 
 than he knows. Shakespeare is about to leave 
 his gay comedies and his light witty speech, his 
 rhymes and his conceits for simple prose and ter- 
 rible tragedies. His '' dark lady " is soon to 
 cure him of all affectation and lightness of speech 
 and even of gaiety and hope. This is the note of 
 profound irony in the Sophoclean sense which 
 adds tragic significance to the whole end of this 
 play. A little later Biron says in words that are 
 prophetic: '^ Honest plain words best pierce the 
 ear of grief." The talk at the end is altogether 
 too earnest for the play: Rosaline even proclaims 
 finally that if after twelve months she finds Biron 
 free of flout and jest she will be '' right joyful of 
 his reformation." 
 
 Whether it was a reformation or not, his 
 black-eyed mistress with the creamy skin cer- 
 tainly ^wrought a complete change In Shake- i 
 speare's life and art. It was his love for her, 
 the gypsy-wanton, which brought him to knowl- 
 edge of life, and turned him as I have said else- 
 where from " a light-hearted writer of comedies 
 
 lis 
 
The PVomen of Shakespeare 
 
 and histories into the author of the greatest trag-| 
 edies that have ever been conceived." Shake- 
 speare owes the greater part of his renown to 
 Mary Fitton. How she must have tortured him 
 before he wrote that wonderful sonnet : 
 
 What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 
 Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within. 
 Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, 
 Still losing when I saw myself to win ! 
 What wretched errors have my heart committed, 
 Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! 
 How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted 
 In the distraction of this madding fever? 
 
 I 
 
 The " madding fever," as we shall see, was 
 not even then at its height. 
 
 114 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SONNETS: THE LOVER's COMPLAINT: 
 
 shakespearf/s dark mistress 
 
 For love is strong as death ; j ealousy is cruel as the grave. 
 
 TN the previous chapter we identified the Rosa- 
 line of Romeo and Juliet with the Rosahne 
 of Love's Labour s Lost and proved that both 
 Rosalines are photographic studies of the " dark 
 lady " of the second sonnet-series, who was 
 Shakespeare's mistress and love. It has been 
 shown also that the idealistic pictures, Julia, 
 Juliet, Portia, Beatrice, and Rosalind are all 
 portraits of the same woman with her high 
 temper mitigated and her wantonness subdued 
 to passionate loyalty and affection. Shakespeare 
 has pictured his heart's love for us, as he has pic- 
 tured no one else in all his plays. 
 
 Browning tells us that every artist is tor- 
 mented with the desire to find some new way of 
 praising the woman he loves; Dante will paint 
 her picture, Raphael will write her a century of 
 
 115 
 
1^ he Women of Shakespeare 
 
 I 
 
 sonnets; he, himself, will use a new verse-form 
 " once and for one only." Shakespeare felt thel^ 
 same need and satisfied It, not only by pouring 
 out his very soul to her In sonnets, but especially 
 by picturing her In both comedies and tragedies 
 In every sort of light, so to speak. Mary Fitton 
 Is the only character In all his dramas whom he 
 has thus shown to us body and soul, and we have ^ 
 not one portrait of her but a dozen. He Is per- 
 petually painting her, now In love, now In hate, 
 as a tall gypsy, queen and wanton, with pitch- 
 black eyes and hair, velvet brow, damask white j 
 skin, red lips, and vivid cheeky speech, and her 
 soul Is made at least as distinct to us as her body: 
 she is bold and proud, this Dian, wily huntress 
 of men; generous, too, and high-tempered; witty 
 above all women and above all women eager to 
 satisfy every impulse of desire. When passion's 
 spell is on him, Shakespeare finds images to 
 convey her loveliness to us such as no other poet 
 ever found before or since: " thine eyes I love " 
 he cries, and talks about their "mourning " and 
 their " pretty ruth," and then enskies them for- 
 ever by comparing them with that " full star that 
 ushers In the even "; her lips, too, he loves, and 
 finds a deathless word for them — " those lips 
 that lovers own hand did make " — the simple 
 
 116 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare's Dark Mistress 
 
 monosyllables kiss and cling, and about her su- 
 perb figure he has thrown a robe of " modern 
 grace " to explain her incommunicable charm. 
 And yet the professor-pedants hum and ha and 
 purse dry lips and wish there were *' some evi- 
 dence of this passion." 
 
 The story set forth in the sonnets is convinc- 
 ing by reason of its simplicity and unexpected- 
 ness. Who would have imagined that Shake- 
 speare with the best head in the world and the 
 best tongue would have asked another man to 
 plead his cause for him with the woman he loved: 
 who would have dreamt that his love would have 
 tempted the friend and given herself to him? It 
 IS certain not only from the sonnets, but from the 
 plays that Shakespeare made this mistake. I 
 have pointed out in The Man Shakespeare that 
 this same story is set forth three times in three 
 different plays written about this time. It is told 
 In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in the last 
 act of which Shakespeare's personal bitterness 
 shows itself again and again in spite of the dra- 
 matic cloak. Valentine's words are not to be 
 mistaken : 
 
 Thou common friend^, that's without faith or love. 
 For such is a friend now .... 
 
 The Italics are mine. 
 
 liT 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 In Much Ado the story is told again, and this 
 time it is dragged in by the heels; for it has 
 nothing whatever to do with the plot and is in 
 itself too serious a theme for the gay comedy. 
 The way the story is told, too, shows Shake- 
 speare's personal feeling in every line as I have 
 proved in my earlier volume. 
 
 In Twelfth Night the same incident is used 
 again, and these three plays cover roughly the 
 '' three years " over which the sonnets extend. 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona was probably re- 
 vised in 1598: Shakespeare's bitterness in it is 
 intense because the betrayal was fresh. In 
 Much Ado, which dates from about 1599, the 
 whole incident is considered more calmly, more 
 philosophically, and in Twelfth Night, dating 
 from 1600, It is merely touched upon. 
 
 In sending his friend to his love, Shakespeare 
 made a schoolboy's blunder as Benedick tells 
 him; he paid dearly for it; but the explanation 
 Is simple enough. Shakespeare was fulfilled, as 
 we have seen, with the peculiarly English rever- 
 ence for noble birth and social rank. Mary Fit- 
 ton was a maid of honour who held her head 
 high; Shakespeare felt himself Inferior to her. 
 Lord William Herbert was a great noble far 
 above even Mistress Fitton In position; he was a 
 
 118 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare's Dark Mistress 
 
 poet to boot; might, therefore, be able to get the 
 girl to understand her poet's transcendent merits. 
 We all long to hear ourselves praised to the 
 woman we love. But Mary Fitton was nineteen 
 and Herbert nearly the same age; she tempted 
 him with her " foul pride " and Shakespeare lost 
 both the friend who had gone as " surety " for 
 him and his love. 
 
 Here the boldest commentators have stopped; 
 but the story does not end here, or we should 
 only have had from Shakespeare a couple of 
 tragedies instead of six or eight. The truth is 
 the critics are reading only from the sonnets, and 
 the sonnets here are not clear enough for them, 
 though they should be. Even the sonnets say 
 plainly that Mary Fitton's traitorism with Her- 
 bert took place in the very begmning of the ac- 
 quaintance: Shakespeare cries that his friend 
 was but '* one hour " his : and not only do the 
 sonnets themselves tell us that they cover a pe- 
 riod of three years, but they show us Shake- 
 speare begging Mary Fitton to admit him as one 
 " Will " in her many '' Wills ''— '' in the num- 
 ber let me pass untold," he cries pitifully — and 
 then: 
 
 For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold 
 That nothing me, a something sweet to thee. 
 
 119 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Moreover, the sonnets don't speak of one 
 " foul fault " of Mary Fitton; but of many, and 
 in the last series addressed to her, Shakespeare 
 goes on complaining of her evil " deeds " and 
 betrayals, till, in the very last sonnet of all, he 
 moans: 
 
 And all my honest faith in thee is lost. 
 
 But his passionate love did not die with his 
 faith, as we shall soon see; in fine, Herbert was 
 but an incident; though to Shakespeare the most 
 important incident In the long chapter of Mary 
 Fitton's unfalth. 
 
 All the Inferences which can be drawn from 
 the sonnets are established and extended in the 
 plays. Before Herbert came on the scene at all 
 (he did not reach London as a boy of eighteen 
 till 1598), In Christmas, 1597, when Love's La- 
 hour's Lost was played at Whitehall, Shake- 
 speare had had proof on proof of Mary Fitton's 
 unfaithfulness: she was even then to him a 
 " wanton,'' but curiously enough there Is no hint 
 of jealousy or of betrayal In BIron's love of Ro- 
 saline which corroborates my argument. Shake- 
 speare's passion for his mistress of which we see 
 the dawn In Romeo and Juliet is still but morning- 
 warm In Love's Labour's Lost, and only reaches 
 
 IfO 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare^s Dark Mistnss 
 
 its burning meridian after the betrayal and to- 
 wards the end of the second sonnet-series. 
 
 I shall be told that in all this I have lost sight 
 of William Herbert and Shakespeare's love for 
 him as shown in the first series of sonnets. In 
 my book, The Man Shakespeare, I have given it 
 as my settled opinion that Shakespeare's affec- 
 tion for young Herbert has been exaggerated out 
 of all reason. I have not disguised my belief 
 that to some extent Shakespeare himself is re- 
 sponsible for the misunderstanding; partly out 
 of snobbery, partly out of hope of favours to 
 come, Shakespeare strained the expression of his 
 liking for young Herbert and his admiration for 
 his youth and " bravery " as far as he w^ell could; 
 but even in the sonnets he condemned his trai- 
 torism with Mary Fitton, and where he could 
 speak more freely in the anonymity of drama, as 
 in the last act of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
 and in Much Ado he showed himself severe to 
 the " false friend " and full of contempt for the 
 '' stealer." 
 
 But before handling Herbert's relations to 
 Shakespeare and to Mary Fitton let me precise 
 Shakespeare's position in the triangular love- 
 duel. The first series of sonnets from i to 125 
 inclusive is addressed to a young man of high po- 
 
 121 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 sltlon, wealth and honourable esteem, whom I 
 take to be Lord William Herbert. One has only 
 to compare and study these first sonnets side by 
 side with the twenty-six sonnets from 127 to 
 152 which are addressed to the " dark lady" to 
 be struck by the essential difference of feeling. 
 The first seventeen or eighteen sonnets to the 
 young man only beg him to marry and get chil- 
 dren so that his beauty may not be lost to the 
 world. The whole appeal is transferred bodily 
 from Venus and Adonis; it was natural enough 
 in the mouth of Venus, maddened with desire of 
 Adonis; but when addressed to a young man by a 
 man It rings forced and false. Then follow son- 
 nets, In which the language of affection Is strained 
 towards love; but in all, there are only half a 
 dozen of them; and If sonnet 23, where Shake- 
 speare apologizes for forgetting to say 
 
 The perfect ceremony of love's rite, 
 may bring the careless reader to doubt, he has 
 only to read sonnet 20 again to convince himself 
 that his suspicions are mistaken. When sonnet 
 26 was written, Shakespeare was already on a 
 journey; while sonnet 33 mourns the loss of the 
 friend who was but " one hour mine." The 
 other sonnets tell of " strong offences " and 
 ** pretty wrongs," of rivalry with another poet, 
 
 122 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare's Dark Mistress 
 
 of coldness and reconciliation, of old age, of 
 loyalty, and a dozen other things; but of passion 
 me judice not one word. 
 
 Let me give my whole thought with as much 
 frankness as is permitted to me to-day in Eng- 
 land: had sonnet 23 never been written, I should 
 have no need to argue the matter, and in a later 
 chapter I shall show that sonnet 23 must also be 
 explained and accounted for naturally. In all 
 the other sonnets the expressions of affection 
 are either far-fetched or wire-drawn or thin; 
 they all ring affectedly. Compare the two son- 
 nets I shall print here in parallel columns: both 
 handle the same theme; 99 is addressed to the 
 youth, 130 to the woman: can any one doubt 
 which is the expression of passionate desire: 
 
 99- 130. 
 
 The forward violet thus My mistress' eyes are 
 did I chide : nothing like the sun : 
 Sweet thief, whence Coral is far more red 
 didst thou steal thy than her lips' red : 
 sweet that smells, If snow be white, why 
 If not from my love's then her breasts are 
 breath? The purple dun, 
 pride. If hairs be wires, black 
 Which on thy soft cheek wires grow on her 
 for complexion dwells head. 
 In my love's veins thou I have seen roses dam- 
 hast too grossly dyed. ask'd, red and white. 
 The lily I condemned But no such roses see I 
 for thy hand, in her cheeks; 
 123 
 
The JVomen of Shakespeare 
 
 And buds of marjoram 
 had stol'n thy hair; 
 The roses fearfully on 
 thorns did stand. 
 One blushing shame, an- 
 other white despair; 
 A third nor red nor 
 white, had stol'n of 
 both 
 And to his robbery had 
 annex'd thy breath; 
 But, for his theft, in 
 pride of all his 
 growth 
 A vengeful canker eat him 
 up to death. 
 More flowers I noted, 
 
 yet I none could see 
 But sweet or colour it 
 had stol'n from thee. 
 
 And in some perfumes is 
 
 there more delight 
 Than in the breath 
 
 that from my mistress 
 
 reeks. 
 I love to hear her speak, 
 
 yet well I know 
 That music hath a far 
 
 more pleasing sound: 
 I grant I never saw a god- 
 dess go, — 
 My mistress, when she 
 
 walks, treads on the 
 
 ground: 
 And yet, by heaven, I 
 
 think my love as rare 
 As any she belied with 
 
 false compare. 
 
 In Intensity the loves are not to be compared; 
 In fact, passion Is not to be found In the first. 
 Among the sonnets to the young man, you 
 suddenly come across one In which there Is a 
 thought of the " dark lady " or mention of her, 
 and forthwith the poet's affectations drop from 
 him, and the page throbs and burns with desire. 
 Doubt Is Impossible : Shakespeare wrote to the 
 youth : 
 
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments ... 
 
 and so forth In a strain much appreciated by the 
 
 124 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare^ s Dark Mistress 
 
 professors. But this is how he writes of the 
 woman : 
 
 What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 
 Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within . . . 
 
 Of course Clapham shudders at this, and 
 Tooting turns away, If indeed Clapham or Toot- 
 ing ever read anything so Immoral; but every 
 writer and every reader worthy of the name 
 knows which expression Is of passion and which 
 of strained affection. Take it at Its lowest, harsh 
 dispraise is a thousand times as strong as af- 
 fected eulogy. Herbert may have been Shake- 
 speare's for " one hour," as is said In sonnet 33, 
 though I do not draw the shameful inference, 
 finding it Indeed altogether incredible and even 
 absurd. But In any case Herbert had little or 
 no Influence on Shakespeare's life or on his art. 
 His ingratitude even, which Shakespeare com- 
 plains of so bitterly in this play and In that, 
 would certainly have been made just as bitter to 
 Shakespeare by some other false friend, if Her- 
 bert had never come into his life. Ingratitude 
 is like yawning — too common to be criminal. 
 
 Disillusion came to Shakespeare through Mary 
 Fitton; it was her faithlessness and not Herbert's 
 which rankled in him. Take up all the sonnets 
 addressed to her from 127 to 152 and read them; 
 
 125 
 
T he Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 there Is no such record of passion's ebb and flow, 
 the surging madness of it and the rage, in any 
 other literature. Every sonnet Is distinguished 
 by Its terrible sincerity. Again and again in the 
 sonnets to the young man, Shakespeare reaches 
 phrases of unearthly spirit beauty; here there are 
 few or none : Shakespeare never forgot his art 
 when writing to the youth; when writing to the 
 woman he was not an artist but a lover. Read 
 140 for the rage and menace in it: 
 
 Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press 
 My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; 
 Lest sorrow lend me words and words express 
 The manner of my pity-wanting pain. 
 If I might teach thee wit, better it were. 
 Though not to love, yet love, to tell me so; 
 As testy sick men, when their deaths be near. 
 No news but health from their physicians know; 
 For if I should despair, I should grow mad. 
 And in my madness might speak ill of thee: 
 Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad. 
 Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. 
 
 That I may not be so, nor thou belied, 
 
 Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go 
 wide. 
 
 Sonnet 147 is a scream of passion almost 
 maniacal in intensity: 
 
 My love is as a fever, longing still 
 For that which longer nurseth the disease; 
 Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, 
 
 126 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare's Dark Mistress 
 
 The uncertain sickly appetite to please^ 
 My reason, the physician to my love. 
 Angry that his prescriptions are not kept. 
 Hath left me, and I desperate now approve 
 Desire is death, which physic did except. 
 Past cure I am, now reason is past care. 
 And frantic-mad with evermore unrest ; 
 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. 
 
 Sonnet 150 paints his mistress' strength and 
 fascination once for all: the adrniration is wrung 
 from him, so to speak: 
 
 ~^0, from what power has thou this powerful might 
 With insufficiency my heart to sway? 
 To make me give the lie to my true sight. 
 And swear that brightness doth 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 warranties of skill 
 That in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? 
 Who taught thee how to make me love thee more 
 The more I hear and see just cause of hate? . . . 
 
 Sonnet 151 is a plain confession of lust, and 
 contains, as Mr. Tyler was the first to point out, 
 a fairly clear reference to Mary Fitton's name 
 {fit one) : 
 
 For, thou betraying me, I do betray 
 
 My nobler part to my gross body's treason; 
 
 My soul doth tell my body that he may 
 
 127 
 
The JVomen of Shakespeare 
 
 Triumph in love; flesh stays no further reason. 
 
 But rising at thy name, doth point out thee, 
 
 As his triumphant prize. . . . 
 
 No want of conscience hold it that I call 
 
 Her — " love " for whose dear love I rise and fall. 
 
 Finally, In sonnet 152, Shakespeare admits 
 with that Impartial Intellect which Is his most fas- 
 cinating quality that If his love Is twice forsworn 
 and has broken bed vows or marriage vows he 
 himself Is twenty times perjured; he has sworn 
 oaths of her " deep kindness " : 
 
 Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy; 
 
 . . . more perjured I, 
 To swear against the truth so foul a lie ! . . . 
 
 I must now leave these enthralling poems with 
 their confession of Insatiate desire, of madden- 
 ing jealousy, contempt and rage, to the miserable 
 admission which Is also an explanation, that all 
 his vows were selfish — " oaths to misuse her,'' 
 and the final loss of faith: 
 
 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 perjured I, 
 To swear against the truth so foul a lie! 
 128 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare's Dark Mistress 
 
 This is his regret that he ever tried to idealize 
 her or even paint her as possessing '' the deep 
 kindness," the soul of goodness we noticed in 
 Julia, Portia and Rosalind. 
 
 Before I pass from the lyrics altogether, I 
 must just touch on the poem " The Lover's 
 Complaint," which appeared at the end of the 
 volume containing the first edition of the sonnets 
 in 1609. It looks to me as if it had been written 
 about 1598. It contains careless little sketches 
 of Shakespeare, Mary Fitton, and Lord Herbert, 
 which in the absence of completer evidence we 
 cannot afford to ignore. If I read the poem 
 aright, it tells the story of Mary Fitton's seduc- 
 tion by Herbert, but the recognizable touches are 
 slight and careless, and I would not attach undue 
 Importance to it. Still its very slightness and 
 carelessness bear out my contention that it was 
 not Mary FItton's slip with Herbert, but her 
 perpetual faithlessness, which filled Shakespeare 
 with jealous rage. Any one fault he could have 
 pardoned: it was the understanding that his de- 
 votion was poured Into a sieve which brought 
 him to despair. 
 
 In " The Lover's Complaint " Shakespeare 
 only appears In a couple of verses: here is one 
 that pictures him: 
 
 129 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 A reverend man tliat graz'd his cattle nigh. 
 
 Sometime a bhisterer^ that the ruffle knew 
 
 Of court, of city, and had let go by 
 
 The swiftest hours, observed as they flew 
 
 Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew. 
 
 And, privileg'd by age, desires to know 
 
 In brief the grounds and motives of her woe. . . . 
 
 The fact that " a reverend man '' and one 
 " privileg'd by age '* was aforetime a " blus- 
 terer " in the city and court strikes me as a 
 would-be confession, but more characteristic of 
 Shakespeare still is the fact that even in the hey- 
 day of youth and while fleeting careless hours he 
 " observed " them as they flew. What all these 
 high qualities have to do with cowherding we are 
 not told. 
 
 Mary Fitton, too, Is recognizable by her pride, 
 for pride has little to do with unkempt hair : 
 
 Her hair, nor loose, nor tied in formal plat, 
 Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride; . . . 
 
 Shakespeare tells us how she held off from 
 Herbert at first, and soon we shall see that Her- 
 bert describes her In the same way: 
 
 Yet did I not, as some my equals did 
 Demand of him, nor being desired, yielded; 
 Finding myself in honour so forbid. 
 With safest distance I mine honour shielded. . • • 
 130 
 
The Sonnets: Shakespeare^s Dark Mistress 
 
 We have also the explanation of Mistress Fit- 
 ton's coldness to Herbert at first: 
 
 For further I could say^ " This man's untrue/' 
 And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling; 
 Heard where his plants in others' orchards grew. 
 Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling; 
 Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling; . . . 
 
 But at length she yielded and " dafi'd the white 
 stole of her chastity " to Herbert's pleading. It 
 was his youth and " beauteous " person won her, 
 helped by his cunning tongue. The description 
 of Herbert is the best we have got; though cur- 
 sory it seems fairly complete: 
 
 His browny locks * did hang in crooked curls ; 
 
 Small show of man was yet upon his chin. . . . 
 
 But it is the next verse which paints him. He 
 is bold and free-spoken, we are told, as he is 
 handsome ; he could ride splendidly, too, and was 
 an admirable advocate — at least In his own cause 
 — the qualification is finely characteristic both of 
 Shakespeare and Herbert: 
 
 So on the tip of his subduing tongue 
 All kinds of arguments and questions deep. 
 All replication prompt, and reason strong. 
 For his advantage still did wake and sleep. 
 
 * In sonnet 144' Herbert is described as " a man right fair." 
 131 
 
The fVomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 As soon as the youth attained his object he left 
 the maiden to grieve for his broken promises and 
 break the rings which he had given her. 
 
 In this poem we have, I beheve, a shght pencil 
 sketch, as it were, of the three figures, a sketch 
 which is very interesting in its way, though per- 
 haps not in itself sufficient to be convincing. But 
 this faint outline of the relations between Her- 
 bert and Mary Fitton is confirmed and strength- 
 ened beyond expectation in the play I am now 
 about to handle. 
 
 132 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 all's well that ends well: HELENA AND 
 BERTRAM: MARY FITTON AND LORD HERBERT 
 
 A\ ^HEN The Man Shakespeare appeared one 
 ^ of my ablest and most sympathetic critics, 
 Mr. Arnold Bennett, put his finger on my state- 
 ment that Shakespeare's friendship for Herbert 
 was only superficial as the weakest point in the 
 book. It was to be expected that Mr. Arnold 
 Bennett would show himself a most excellent 
 critic; for fine criticism is only the other side of 
 creative genius. Yet I almost despaired of find- 
 ing any further evidence on the point, for both 
 Shakespeare's snobbishness and his hope of fa- 
 vours to come from Lord William Herbert (to 
 say nothing about legitimate fear for his own 
 safety) hindered him from telling us frankly 
 what he thought of his high-born faithless friend. 
 He hinted it clearly enough in the sonnets, and 
 more clearly still when protected by the dramatic 
 shield in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and in 
 Much Ado; but something more was wanted. 
 
 133 
 
The JFomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 When I was asked to write pf The Women of 
 Shakespeare I was on a holiday in the south of 
 Italy, far away from my books, and without the 
 notes made in earlier readings; this deprivation 
 brought me good fortune. Reading all Shake- 
 speare over again without conscious preposses- 
 sion I found In a later play, AlVs Well — a play I 
 had always disliked in spite of Coleridge's ex- 
 travagant eulogy, and therefore had read too cur- 
 sorily — a passage of extraordinary significance, a 
 passage which shows us Herbert to the life and 
 his Inexpressibly vulgar and caddish view of his 
 relations with Mary FItton. I confess my over- 
 sight the more easily because it only proves how 
 little I have been Inclined to strain plain Infer- 
 ences. 
 
 We can see Herbert now In the light of Shake- 
 speare's mature judgment. With supreme art 
 he gives us Herbert's own view of the seduction 
 of Mary FItton. We have. In fact, Herbert's 
 confession as If taken down from his own lips, 
 with the " i's " dotted and the '' t's " crossed, 
 and those who can read it and still believe In a 
 guilty Intimacy between the two men are greatly 
 to be pitied. 
 
 AlVs Well that Ends Well remains, in spite of 
 the early sketch which Is Its skeleton, so to 
 
 134 
 
JlFs Well that Ends Well 
 
 speak, a work of the master's maturity. As I 
 have said, it is of capital importance, for it fills 
 a gap in our knowledge, making clear not only 
 Herbert's view of Mary Fitton, but what is of 
 infinitely more interest to us the way Shakespeare 
 regarded his high-born patron, friend, and rival. 
 
 The picture of Flelena in this play has been so 
 bepraised that it demands attentive scrutiny: 
 Coleridge called Helena " the loveliest of Shake- 
 speare's characters " and the professor-manda- 
 rins all echo this nonsensical eulogy. It will be 
 convenient to deal with this minor matter first; 
 for it affords an easy entrance to the heart of the 
 greater problem. 
 
 The features of Helena are outlined almost 
 beyond power of modification in the first scene 
 of the first act. She admits she is in love with 
 " a bright particular star" Bertram: 
 
 .... my imagination 
 Carries no favour in't but Bertram's. 
 I am undone: there is no living, none 
 If Bertram be away . . . 
 
 This is hardly the way a young girl confesses 
 her love even to herself; it is needlessly em- 
 phatic* Then Parolles comes to view, whom she 
 
 * Unless, indeed, it is Shakespeare's idea of Mary Fitton's 
 passion for Herbert. 
 
 135 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 weighs up far too correctly as a " notorious 
 liar," a coward, and "a great way fool"; yet 
 she engages at once with this fool and coward, 
 in a long wordy discussion on virginity, which she 
 admits " is weak in defence " while confessing 
 that she wishes to lose it " to her own liking." 
 
 Then she talks of Bertram at court, and uses 
 images in swarms to show off her word-wit, after 
 the fashion of the time and the custom of young 
 Shakespeare; and, lastly, she becomes thought- 
 ful, almost philosophic, in the rhymed soliloquy 
 that begins: 
 
 Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie. 
 Which we ascribe to heaven: . . . 
 
 This monologue ends with the tawdry af- 
 fected words : 
 
 . . . who ever strove 
 To show her merits that did miss her love? 
 The King's disease — my project may deceive me. 
 But my intents are fix'd, and will not leave me. 
 
 In all these eighty or a hundred lines there is 
 hardly a hint of feminine characterization. It 
 is as poor, as lifeless, a sketch as any of Shake- 
 speare's early failures in the same field. Hel- 
 ena's best words are those in which she pictures 
 her lover; she admires his " arched brows," 
 *' hawking eyes " and '* curls." I must just note 
 
 136 
 
All's Well that Ends Well 
 
 that this physical description, being very rare in 
 Shakespeare, is important; it indicates his ex- 
 traordinary interest in the character of Ber- 
 tram.* 
 
 The chief peculiarity in Helena's character so 
 far is coarseness in thought and words, and this 
 coarseness is a characteristic of the majority of 
 Shakespeare's heroines. English criticism fol- 
 lowing Coleridge has exhausted ingenuity in ex- 
 plaining and excusing it. The defence is simple : 
 the whole fault lies, if you please, in the time: 
 Shakespeare's heroines are cleaner-minded than 
 Fletcher's, and what could one wish for more 
 than that? But all primitive times were not 
 coarse; Homer and Sophocles are free of the 
 fault, and Dante's Francesca is a model of reti- 
 cent delicacy of speech. It looks as if the fault 
 were in our race, or, to speak more truly, in the 
 author, and though we should not be far wrong 
 if we concluded that the talk which went on 
 among the young noblemen on the stage in Shake- 
 speare's time was as lewd as it well could be, and 
 nine out of ten of the young women whom he 
 
 * The " curls " too and pride connect Bertram with the 
 faithless young lover whom we naturally took to be Herbert 
 in The Lover's Complaint — 
 
 His browny locks did hang in crooked curls. 
 
 1S7 
 
The fVotnen oj Shakespeare 
 
 met in the theatre were quite willing to bandy 
 obscenities with their aristocratic admirers, still 
 the coarseness of speech found in his dramas 
 must be ascribed to his individual preference. 
 Sophocles and Aristophanes in this respect, 
 though of the same period, were poles apart, 
 and Spenser was far more mealy-mouthed than 
 our world-poet. It is certain, too, from Mer- 
 cutio and Hamlet, and the ever-famous Nurse, 
 that Shakespeare himself enjoyed jests which in 
 our more squeamish times would startle a club 
 smoking-room. I find no fault with him on this 
 account, but when he depicts pure maidens en- 
 joying the high flavour of such discussions, I can 
 only say that he commits an offence against Na- 
 ture and an error in art. He does not make 
 Helena more real to us by her eagerness to talk 
 of her virginity, but less real. It has never been 
 a characteristic of young girls to like to discuss 
 this theme with men whom they despise. The 
 truth, of course, is that Mary Fitton was exces- 
 sively sensual, bold and free-spoken, and because 
 of his love for her Shakespeare was continually 
 tempted to ascribe her qualities to his heroines. 
 Raphael, it is said, gave the brown, almond eyes 
 of his mistress to all his Madonnas. 
 
 When questioned by the Countess, Helena is 
 138 
 
JWs Well that Ends Well 
 
 forced to admit the secret of her love; true, she 
 fences at first with words; but, as soon as she 
 has brought herself to confess, her avowal be- 
 comes as frank and passionate as a young man's 
 would have been. This long speech belongs to 
 the later revision, and is manifestly Shake- 
 speare's own confession. Here are some lines: 
 
 I know I love in vain, strive against hope; 
 
 Yet in this captious and intenihle sieve 
 
 I still pour in the waters of my love 
 
 And tack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like 
 
 Religious in mine error, I adore 
 
 The sun* that looks upon his worshipper. 
 
 But knows of him no more . . . 
 
 If any one doubts that this Is Shakespeare speak- 
 ing In his proper person of his love for Mary 
 FItton, let him consider the lines which I put In 
 Italics. Helena goes on: 
 
 . . . O! then, give pity 
 
 To her whose state is such, that cannot choose 
 But lend and give where she is sure to lose; 
 That seeks not to find that her search implies. 
 But riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies ! 
 
 * Biron in Love's Labour's Lost is a mere mask of Shake- 
 speare himself, and Biron says to Rosaline: 
 
 Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face 
 That we, like savages, may worship it. 
 
 But it is the "captious and intenible sieve" which convinces 
 me that Shakespeare is here giving expression to his own re- 
 gret. 
 
 139 
 
The tVomen of Shakespeare 
 
 The sad, Vlola-llke resignation of the last verses 
 Is untrue to Helena; for Helena has already told 
 us that her "Intents are fix'd"; already she 
 means to cure the King and ask for Bertram's 
 hand In recompense. 
 
 Her persuasion of the King, too, has nothing 
 feminine In It; It Is, indeed, curiously calm and 
 rational In tone : 
 
 What I can do, can do no hurt to try, 
 
 and when the King asks her how long the cure 
 win take, she bursts Into a parody of poetry: 
 
 The greatest grace lending grace. 
 Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring 
 Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring. 
 Ere twice in murk and occidental damp 
 Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp. . . , 
 
 and so forth In a way that ought to have fright- 
 ened, or at least exasperated, his Majesty, In- 
 stead of convincing him. 
 
 When asked " what she will venture " on the 
 cure, she answers as a young lyric poet con- 
 temptuous of feminine modesty might answer: 
 
 Tax of impudence, 
 A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame, 
 Traduc'd by odious ballads: my maiden's name 
 Sear'd otherwise; nay, worse of worst extended. 
 With vilest torture let my life be ended. 
 140 
 
\ 
 
 JlFs Well that Ends Well 
 
 The rhyme here adds a touch of exquisite comi- v 
 cality to such boasting as would befit ParoUes or 
 even the Immortal Pistol. 
 
 Then the " pure and exquisite Helena/* as 
 Professor Herford calls her In the Eversley Edi- 
 tion, boldly asks In payment of her service for 
 the husband she may select. Of course all this 
 stuff Is beneath criticism: one might as well take 
 the mlaulllngs of a midnight cat for eloquence 
 as this for the dramatic presentation of a maid- 
 en's character. Helena hardly speaks at all; is, 
 in fact, nothing more than the mouthpiece of 
 young Shakespeare's crude opinions. A few 
 phrases of his later writing glitter here and 
 there; but they are embedded In a lot of rhymed 
 nonsense and only serve to confuse our view of 
 the girl. 
 
 As we have now reached the middle of the sec- 
 ond act, it would be almost impossible for any 
 art to make Helena live for us. Shakespeare, 
 however, seems to have made up his mind to at- 
 tempt the impossible, for we now meet continu- 
 ally the revision of his riper manhood. When 
 asked to choose her husband, Helena suddenly 
 forgets her boldness, and begins to talk like a 
 girl: or rather like one of Shakespeare's girls, 
 say Portia for choice : 
 
 141 
 
The Woinen oj Shakespeare 
 
 I am a simple maid; and therein wealthiest* 
 
 That, I protest, I simply am a maid. 
 
 Please it, your majesty, I have done already: 
 
 The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me, 
 
 "We blush that thou shouldst choose; but be refus'd, 
 
 Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever: 
 
 We'll ne'er come there again." 
 
 I do not like the second line of this excerpt, 
 though it expresses a sentiment that Shakespeare 
 uses a hundred times; but it is impossible not to 
 admire the way in which the third line almost 
 turns the fault into a beauty. Helena, however, 
 doffs her maiden modesty as suddenly as she as- 
 sumed it; evidently Shakespeare did not revise 
 her speech to the fourth lord; this "pure" 
 maiden says: 
 
 You are too young, too happy, and too good 
 To make yourself a son out of my blood. 
 
 Immediately afterwards she speaks again be- 
 comingly to Bertram: indeed just as Portia spoke 
 to Bassanio; Portia says: 
 
 . . . her gentle spirit 
 Commits itself to yours to be directed 
 As from her lord, her governor, her king. 
 
 * This " therein wealthiest " reminds me of Portia's " hap- 
 piest of all." 
 
 142 
 
I 
 
 JWs Well that Ends Well 
 
 Helena says: 
 
 I dare not say I take you; but I give 
 
 Me_, and my service^ ever whilst I live. 
 
 Into your guiding power. This is the man. . . . 
 
 One could have wished the last four words away; 
 but the first two lines almost save the situation. 
 When Bertram declares 
 
 I cannot love her_, nor will I strive to do't, 
 
 one wonders, in view of the final reconciliation 
 between them, why this Bertram should be so 
 unnecessarily rude and resolved. It was this curt 
 rudeness of Bertram as much as his " curls '* and 
 his Insensate pride of birth which first made me 
 see that Shakespeare was Identifying Bertram 
 with his faithless friend and rival, Lord Wil- 
 liam Herbert. For this rudeness of Bertram is 
 not only exaggerated beyond the needs of the 
 play, it Is also consistent with what we know 
 from history of Herbert's character and of the 
 relations between him and Mary Fitton. After 
 Mistress Fitton had borne him a child. Lord 
 William Herbert was asked to marry her; but 
 he refused peremptorily, " admitting the act," 
 we are told, but denying responsibility. 
 
 Bertram's contempt Is so wounding that Hel- 
 143 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 ena for the moment renounces her weird court- 
 ship; "Let the rest go," she cries; but the mis- 
 chief's done. Moreover, she takes Bertram's 
 hand as soon as he overcomes his unwillingness 
 to offer it, and marries the man she knows dis- 
 likes her. Just as Helena has varied coarse pur- 
 suit with modest blushing, so now she varies hu- 
 mility with boldness. She says to Bertram: 
 
 . . . Sir, I cannot say 
 But that I am your most obedient servant, 
 
 which sounds perilously like farcical exaggera- 
 tion; the next moment she asks her unloving 
 master for a kiss! 
 
 A little later we have the famous passage 
 wherein she pictures Bertram as driven to the 
 wars by her, and pities his " tender limbs " 
 praying the bullets to " fly with false aim." But, 
 good as the verses are, nothing can redeem Hel- 
 ena or render her credible, and the stratagem 
 by which she makes her husband her lover is a 
 thousand times more revolting than the compul- 
 sion she has used to make him wed her. 
 
 In his youth Shakespeare seems to have known 
 very little about girls and nothing about their 
 natural modesty, which fact in itself throws an 
 evil sidelight upon his wife's character. 
 
 144 
 
AlVs Well that Ends Well 
 
 '' All's well that ends well " Is Helena's re- 
 iterated excuse. But it will not serve her. Take 
 merely the words: 
 
 But, O, strange men 
 That can such sweet use make of what they hate. 
 
 The words " sweet use " under the circumstances 
 are an offence: It Is a boy's confession, not a 
 girl's. 
 
 At the beginning of the play, Indeed, Helena 
 Is a sort of boy wavering between absurd hu- 
 mility and cheeky boldness; later she becomes a 
 woman at moments, with fine touches In her of 
 pity and affection; the best I can say for her Is 
 that she Is never more than half realized by the 
 poet. When Dr. Brandes calls her a " patient 
 Griselda " and says that Shakespeare has shed 
 over her figure " a Raphael-like beauty," I ex- 
 cuse him as led astray by English commentators; 
 but when Professor Dowden asserts that Shake- 
 speare could not choose but endeavour to make 
 beautiful and noble the entire character and ac- 
 tion of Helena's " sacred boldness " I grin Irrev- 
 erently and recall Heine's contemptuous gibe at 
 English critics. 
 
 The truth is that the character of Helena Is 
 a mere jumble of contradictions, without coher- 
 
 145 
 
The fVomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 twzt or charm; she Is not realized clearly enough 
 or deeply enough to live. 
 
 The whole story of the play is unsuited to the 
 character of a young girl, and perhaps no care 
 could have made a girl charming, or even cred- 
 ible, who would pursue a man to such lengths or 
 win him by such a trick. 
 
 Shakespeare probably sketched out the play 
 early, about the time he was picturing girls run- 
 ning after men, but he had now identified Ber- 
 tram with Lord Herbert and he could not paint 
 Mary Fitton's love for his rival fairly. 
 
 I am glad that just as Dr. Johnson " could not 
 reconcile his heart to Bertram " so Swinburne 
 with as good reason '' could not reconcile his In- 
 stincts to Helena." But the desire to praise 
 every work of Shakespeare was too strong for 
 Swinburne even here, so he went on to talk of the 
 " * sweet, serene, skylike ' sanctity and attraction 
 of adorable old age made more than ever near 
 and dear to us in the incomparable figure of the 
 old Countess of Rousillon." This sing-song of 
 praise Is undeserved; but a study of the old lady's 
 portrait will bring us by the easiest w^ay to our 
 main thesis, the Identity of Bertram with Her- 
 bert and his confession. Swinburne evidently 
 took whatever the Countess says as characterlza- 
 
 146 
 
JWs Well that Ends Well 
 
 tion, whereas more often than not Shakespeare 
 is using her as a mask to display his own wisdom. 
 At the very beginning she excuses Helena's 
 passion in memorable words. 
 
 Even so it was with me when I was young. 
 
 If we are nature's, these are ours; this thorn 
 Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong; 
 
 Our blood to us, this to our blood is born; 
 It is the show and seal of nature's truth. 
 Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth; 
 By our remembrances of days foregone, 
 Such were our faults — or then we thought them none. 
 
 Nowhere else in all his work does Shakespeare 
 try to give us his real opinion about passion, the 
 whole unvarnished truth, as carefully as he does 
 here. Desire belongs rightly to youth, he says, 
 and yet condemns it as the thorn to the rose. Is 
 it a fault? he asks: In youth we did not think so, 
 is his half-hearted answer. Nowhere else do 
 we see more clearly than here how anxious he 
 was to keep a perfect balance, and Emerson's 
 regret that Shakespeare never gave us his whole 
 mind on the highest matters that concern man 
 is a mere confession that Emerson could not read 
 the dramatist. On this matter at least Shake- 
 speare's opinion was far saner, better balanced, 
 and nearer to the heart of truth than Emerson's 
 cheap Puritanism. But is it true, as Shakespeare 
 
 147 
 
The JFomen of Shakespeare 
 
 appears to think here, that passionate desire Is 
 an appanage of youth alone and wanes out with 
 the years? It looks as if he were judging by con- 
 vention and not alter experience. 
 
 This speech does not paint the Countess for 
 us. No old lady would be so anxious to keep a 
 perfect balance. If she liked the girl, she might 
 be inclined to smile on her love-sick passion for 
 her son; if she did not like her, she would de- 
 spise her for it. The Countess is too measured- 
 wise. Or Is Shakespeare suggesting here that 
 an old lady would take a somewhat severe view 
 of passion, severer than a man? I think not; 
 that is too subtle for the dramatist: apparently 
 we have here Shakespeare's own opinion, given 
 most scrupulously.* 
 
 In the second scene of the third act, the old 
 Countess brings us to wonder. As soon as she 
 hears from her son that he has wedded Helena 
 and not '' bedded " her, and has sworn to make 
 the '' not*^ eternal, she calls him " rash unbridled 
 boy," declares that she " washes his name out of 
 her blood," and that " twenty such rude boys " 
 
 * In Love's Labour's Lost the hero Biron, roiing Shake- 
 speare's alter ego, speaks of passion in much the same way, 
 but with two or three rears' less experience: 
 
 Young blood doth not obey an old decree; 
 We cannot cross the cause why we were born . . . 
 lis 
 
V 
 
 AWs Well that Ends Well 
 
 might serve Helena. She begs the gentleman to 
 go to him : 
 
 . . . tell him that his sword can never win 
 The honour that he loses: more I'll entreat you 
 Written to bear along . . . 
 
 What does this mean? It looks as if Shake- 
 speare were taking Mary Fitton's side against 
 young Herbert. In any case the condemnation 
 is too impartial and far too emphatic in expres- 
 sion for a mother to use about an only son. It 
 sets one thinking therefore. Of course Her- 
 bert's mother was " Sidney's sister " and re- 
 nowned for high qualities. I think Shakespeare 
 had this fine model in mind when drawing the old 
 Countess Rousillon. However this may be, when 
 he portrays a mother judging her only son too 
 severely, he must, at least, have had very special 
 reasons for disliking her son. In just the same 
 way he gets the impartial Abbess in The Comedy 
 of Errors to condemn his wife, Adriana, and her 
 continual, jealous scolding. Moreover, it is 
 astonishing that Shakespeare should have cared, 
 in his maturity, to revise so poor a sketch as this 
 AlVs Well. He must have known that the theme 
 was impossible : why did he touch it? Why after 
 working on it did he leave it in such a faulty con- 
 
 149 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 dition? When Michelangelo leaves a statue 
 unfinished, his P'leta of the RodaninI Palace for 
 example, It is because the rough, imperfect mod- 
 elling, the rude nose, and vast, sightless sockets 
 are more expressive than perfect features would 
 have been. Similarly if Shakespeare takes this 
 unsatisfactory theme in hand and revises it, here 
 carelessly, here with particular, unnecessary de- 
 tail, it is surely to satisfy some personal need of 
 self-expression. The whole play bristles with 
 difficulties which no critic has ever tried to an- 
 swer or even to face; let us see if the riddle will 
 not solve Itself. 
 
 First of all let us settle as near as we can the 
 date of the revision. Several passages help us 
 to this. Everyone remembers how the porter in 
 Macbeth speaks of those who go " the prim- 
 rose * way to the everlasting bonfire." The 
 clown In the fifth scene of the fourth act of AlV s 
 Well gives us the first sketch of that magnificent 
 phrase: he speaks about: 
 
 The flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the 
 great fire. 
 
 Besides we have already caught distinct echoes 
 
 * Ophelia, too, in Hamlet speaks of " the primrose path of 
 dalliance." 
 
 150 
 
JWs Well that Ends Well 
 
 of Portia and hints of Viola in the revision of 
 Helena. 
 
 This revision was much earlier than Macbeth, 
 yet it is evidently a product of Shakespeare's suf- 
 fering. To be more exact, it is earlier, I feel sure, 
 than Hamlet because it is not so bitter, and prob- 
 ably later than Twelfth Night and Jidiiis Casar. 
 The time further explains why Shakespeare's re- 
 vision of the character of Helena is so ineffectual. 
 When he revised The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
 he did it all of a piece; he had before him the 
 model which afterwards served for Portia ; it was 
 his first view of Mary Fitton from a certain dis- 
 tance as a great lady, and he made her credible 
 to us because he pictured her in love with him- 
 self. But before revising AlFs Well he had been 
 deceived by Mary Fitton and forced to realize 
 her wantonness; he persisted in loving her, tried 
 to rebuild his ruin'd love; he will not yet tell us 
 the naked truth about her: he still prefers to 
 idealize her, but he simply cannot describe her 
 love for Herbert-Bertram with any charm or 
 sincerity; even the revision, therefore, wavers and 
 Is unsatisfactory. For this and other reasons 
 which will soon show themselves I place the re- 
 vision of AlV s Well about the time of Julius 
 Casar and slightly before Hamlet. But whether 
 
 151 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 put before or after Julius Casar matters little; 
 we are near enough to be true to Shakespeare's | 
 nature and growth, and that Is perhaps better | 
 even than temporal truth. 
 
 Now let us take up the main question with this 
 knowledge in mind, that Shakespeare revised the 
 play about 1601, after he had been in love for 
 some time with the " dark lady," and after Her- 
 bert had betrayed him. When Dr. Johnson 
 condemned Bertram, he was wiser than he knew. 
 It seems to me that Shakespeare's dislike of cer- 
 tain faults in the youthful Herbert comes to light 
 in this harsh sketch of Bertram. Contrary to his 
 custom the dramatist forces us to detest his pro- 
 tagonist. Moreover, though Bertram is by way 
 of being the hero of the piece, he is allowed to 
 speak most contemptuously of the heroine whom 
 Shakespeare evidently intends us to admire. 
 Every quality given to this Bertram must be 
 weighed carefully. From sheer insensate pride 
 of birth he holds Helena " most base," and dis- 
 dains her as "a poor physician's daughter," though 
 his mother loves her. Furthermore, not only 
 does his mother condemn him and so alienate our 
 sympathy from him, but Parolles speaks of him 
 as *' a foolish idle boy; but for all that very rut- 
 tish." And though he is shov/n as having de- 
 
 152 
 
AlFs Well that Ends Well 
 
 spatched " sixteen businesses ... a month's 
 length apiece " In a night, and though he Is 
 praised on all hands for courage and capacity, 
 Parolles returns to the charge, declaring that the 
 young Count is '' a dangerous and lascivious boy 
 who Is a whale to virginity and devours up all the 
 fry It finds." Yet this lascivious Bertram refuses 
 to " bed " Helena. These needless contradictions 
 and the extravagantly precise and emphatic ac- 
 cusations of Parolles betray personal feeling. 
 Besides all these charges agree with the contem- 
 porary portrait of young Herbert and his lech- 
 ery given us by Clarendon. 
 
 Another weightier point. Shakespeare knows 
 that he Is going to end the play happily. As 
 soon, therefore, as Bertram learns that he has 
 slept with Helena, he must change towards her, 
 and show her affection; he does this, declares, 
 indeed, that he will love her " dearly, very 
 dearly." Was It then the embracing which has 
 made his right-about-face possible? It would 
 have been w^ell, one would think, at least to have 
 passed this point over In silence, to have left it 
 to be inferred by our Imagination, but Shake- 
 speare loathes this Bertram and makes him as- 
 sert that the embracing had no effect upon him 
 as, in fact, we know that It had no effect upon 
 
 153 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Herbert. But in art the abrupt change of feel- 
 ing must be motived: why, then, does Bertram 
 suddenly turn from hating to loving Helena? 
 What should be an explanation is expressly ruled 
 out and the improbable is thus made incredible! 
 A man does not veer from hate to love without 
 reason; and Bertram is left without a shadow of 
 reason. But Shakespeare in his maturity does 
 not blunder in this crude way. Such mistakes on 
 his part are always due to personal feeling. 
 
 There is another piece of evidence which of 
 itself should be convincing. Bertram's confession 
 that he possessed Diana-Helena is most peculiar; 
 it is worse than unnecessary as we shall see; it 
 would have been better to pass the matter over 
 in silence; yet the confession is dragged in, made 
 circumstantial, and it damns Bertram in the 
 reader's eyes as an unspeakable cad; puts him 
 far lower than his mother's condemnation or 
 Parolles' contempt. Yet, with consummate art, 
 this accusing confession is contrived to strike us 
 as sincere, bears indeed every imprint of truth 
 heightened by careless, off-hand expression. Let 
 us weigh each word of it, for it is surely Shake- 
 speare telling us the actual truth about the con- 
 nection between Herbert and Mary Fitton. Ber- 
 tram says: 
 
All's Well that Ends Well 
 
 . . . certain it is I lik'd her. 
 And boarded her i' the wanton way of youth. 
 She knew her distance and did angle for me 
 Madding my desire with her restraint. 
 As all impediments in fancy's course 
 Are motives of more fancy; and, in fine. 
 Her infinite cunning, with her modern grace. 
 Subdued me to her rate: she got the ring: 
 And I got that which any inferior might 
 At market-price have bought . . . 
 
 Here we have the plain, unvarnlsh'd truth at last. 
 This is surely Herbert-Bertram's view of Mary 
 Fitton. The lines I have put in italics are of in- 
 tense interest: the " infinite cunning'' with which 
 Mary Fitton maddened eagerness, the affected 
 self-restraint — are all used later to make Cres- 
 sida and Cleopatra life-like to us; that " modern 
 grace " was Mary Fitton's magic gift we may be 
 sure, as native to her as the utter wantonness laid 
 to her charge in the last two lines here, just as 
 Shakespeare charged her with it again and again 
 in the sonnets, and painted it for us as a vice of 
 blood incurable in his " false Cressida." 
 
 Here, too, we have Shakespeare's frank and 
 final judgment of Herbert. Bertram-Herbert 
 paints himself for us to the life as the shallow, 
 selfish, ineffably conceited, aristocrat-cad; not a 
 single virtue in him save the common, hard vir- 
 tues of vigour and courage. No wonder stout 
 
 155 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 old Dr. Johnson could not stomach him. The 
 contemptuous truth of the portrait shows that 
 Shakespeare has at length been able to appraise 
 the young nobleman at his proper value. Most 
 likely, Indeed, as I have said elsewhere, he saw 
 Herbert In his true colours even earlier, but 
 thought it too dangerous to himself to state his 
 true opinion In his proper person In the sonnets. 
 This elaborate self-judgment of Herbert is in 
 perfect accord with the condemnation passed 
 upon the " false friend " and " stealer " in The 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona and in Much Ado. I 
 am delighted, however, to have It here in un- 
 mistakable terms, for it not only throws new 
 light on the relations between Herbert and 
 Mary FItton and his silly pride of birth, but It 
 sets all doubt at rest as to the slight nature of 
 the connection between Herbert and Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 Some other Indications that I am justified in 
 thus Identifying Bertram with Herbert may be 
 given here. As I have said, it is an historic fact 
 that when Miss FItton bore Herbert a son he 
 was asked to marry her and refused flatly, 
 rudely, just as Bertram out of tune with the 
 comedy refuses Imperiously to have anything to 
 do with Helena. 
 
 156 
 
 ! 
 
All's Well that Ends Well 
 
 Another interesting point: when Parolles is 
 questioned by the King, he declares that Bertram 
 " was mad for her " and adds that he " knew of 
 their going to bed, and other motions, as prom- 
 ising her marriage, and things which would de- 
 rive me ill-will to speak of." 
 
 That " promising marriage " goes far by it- 
 self to establish the identity of Bertram with 
 Herbert, for it has nothing on earth to do with 
 the action; it contradicts indeed both the spirit 
 and letter of the play, for Bertram is married 
 and is to be reconciled to his wife. Shakespeare 
 wishes us to believe that Lord Herbert had 
 promised marriage to Mistress Fitton which the 
 historical fact that he was asked to marry her, 
 seems to imply. Again, the introduction of Pa- 
 rolles here only hems the action. Besides, what 
 does Parolles mean by those " things which 
 would derive me ill-will to speak of"? Is it 
 Shakespeare confessing his own apprehensions to 
 us, or a hint of worse things undivulged as yet on 
 the part of Herbert or both? I think, both, and 
 when we come to study Cressida we shall find the 
 foul insinuation again and have our worst suspi- 
 cions confirmed. Shakespeare's bitterness was 
 so over-mastering, his dislike of Herbert so in- 
 tense, that he takes Mary Fitton's side in the 
 
 157 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 quarrel and tells the dangerous truth while hint- 
 ing at darker secrets. 
 
 This Identification of Bertram with Herbert 
 fills up a great gap In our knowledge with curious 
 completeness, and explains what otherwise must 
 be regarded as the most stupid and fundamental 
 blunders In the play. 
 
 I am especially delighted to find in Herbert- 
 Bertram's confession the words " modern grace " 
 applied to Mary Fitton. Some critics hold that 
 " modern " should be read " modest," but I pre- 
 fer " modern " In our sense of the word. I re- 
 gard the phrase as Shakespeare's acknowledg- 
 ment of Mary FItton's novel witchery. That 
 " modern grace " is the touch of inexplicable en- 
 chantment which I had been looking for In order 
 to understand his " dark lady's " deathless fasci- 
 nation. In a later and still better portrait of 
 Shakespeare's love, the very same quality In her 
 is selected for praise by the coldest and most Im- 
 partial of judges. In Antony and Cleopatra, 
 Caesar says of the dead Cleopatra she looks 
 
 As she would catch another Antony 
 In her strong toil of grace. 
 
 One or two words more In general on this 
 play: Shakespeare is contemptuous of character 
 
 158 
 
JWs Well that Ends Well 
 
 in it. As in his latest work, so towards the end 
 of this play, whenever he is led away by personal 
 feeling, he spills himself into this or that char- 
 acter almost indifferently. Take, for example, 
 what the First Lord says : 
 
 The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill 
 together: our virtues would be proud if our faults 
 whipped them not ; and our crimes would despair, if they 
 were not cherished by our virtues . . . 
 
 This is certainly our gentle, fair-minded Shake- 
 speare himself speaking without a mask. 
 
 The curious way in which Lafeu reads Pa- 
 rolles, is very much in the same vein as Hamlet's 
 later reading of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz 
 and Osric. At length Shakespeare sees the young 
 courtier as he is: " There can be no kernel in this 
 light nut . . ." and again " the soul of this man 
 is his clothes." 
 
 It is probable that shortly after betraying him 
 Herbert drew away from Shakespeare. Vain 
 self-love generally teaches us to slight those 
 whom we have injured, and as soon as the pow- 
 erful patron began to stand aloof, others fol- 
 lowed the great lord's example, and Shakespeare 
 was taught what fair-weather friends are worth. 
 The curious point is that he is not bitter at first. 
 His bitterness is an after-growth, sustained by his 
 
 159 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 ethical judgment; this Lafeu does not condemn 
 ParoUes as harshly as Hamlet condemns Guilden- 
 stern and Rosencrantz. Indeed he accepts him 
 at the end and asks him to accompany him home ; 
 at least he will find amusement in him. Gentle 
 Shakespeare could endure fools gladly as St. Paul 
 advised, for he managed, as Lafeu tells us, to 
 " make sport " with them. 
 
 Shakespeare sketched Lafeu as a wise old 
 nobleman as a companion picture to the portrait 
 of the old Countess, but the picture of Lafeu 
 suffers from an all-too-close identification with 
 Shakespeare himself. As in early manhood 
 Shakespeare loved to picture a side of himself — 
 especially his gaiety, wit, and talkativeness — In 
 Biron, Gratlano, and Mercutio, so in maturity he 
 loved to Incorporate his honest loyalty in out- 
 spoken old gentlemen like Lafeu, Gonzalo, Fla- 
 vlus, Menenlus, and Kent. 
 
 The gem of the play, however, for us Is Her- 
 bert-Bertram's confession; it dates the revision; 
 the talk is fresh; It smacks of the deed, and it 
 finally settles the problem of Shakespeare's re- 
 lations with Lord William Herbert. I can now 
 go on to treat with perfect freedom of Shake- 
 speare's long love-duel with Mary Fitton. 
 
 160 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 JULIUS C^SAR: hamlet: OTHELLO 
 Di te mi dolga, amor. — Michelangelo. 
 
 f I ^ HOUGH Shakespeare's passion for his 
 gypsy-wanton reached its burning meridian 
 in the sonnets, the long throbbing afternoon of 
 desire was hotter than the full noontide. When 
 he cried his love in the lyrics, he still hoped to 
 win or charm his mistress; but her perpetual un- 
 faith gradually dried up the affection and tender- 
 ness in him to the very roots, leaving only the lust 
 of the flesh. Again and again the cruel desire 
 was whipped to frenzy by jealousy, and grew In 
 intensity as his love waned out. Incidentally I 
 shall show that all his great tragedies were 
 phases of his Insensate passion for this one 
 woman. She Inspired the first great love-song of 
 his youth, Romeo and Juliet; she Inspired, too, 
 the far finer and more terrible tragedy of mature 
 passion, Antony and Cleopatra. All the plays 
 from 1597 on reek of her presence, and Shake- 
 
 161 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 spcarc's breakdown In health was due to the fact 
 that he had spent himself body and soul in her 
 earthy-coarse service. When at length she left 
 him finally, after twelve years of passion and a 
 scbre of betrayals, to be married for the second 
 time early in 1608, he fell, to use Dante's phrase, 
 " as a dead body falls " — never to recover com- 
 pletely. If ever a man was passion's slave it was 
 Shakespeare. We have now to follow his agony 
 from the sonnets to height after height where 
 foot of guide has never yet passed; for the lover 
 was Shakespeare, and every fluctuation of the 
 " madding fever " was marked with a new mas- 
 terpiece. 
 
 A great many English critics are Intent on 
 telling me that In painting Shakespeare in this 
 way I am denigrating him, turning him from a 
 deml-god Into a mere man. At the very begin- 
 ning of my labour, Meredith warned me that 
 " Englishmen will not readily accept this picture 
 of Shakespeare languishing and burning." But 
 they are accepting it, it would appear; for truth 
 carries with It a magic of persuasion, and they 
 will yet come to see that, instead of diminishing 
 and degrading Shakespeare, I am bringing him 
 nearer to their love and affection by showing him 
 pure human. 
 
 162 
 
Julius Ccesar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 The greatest souls are just those most certain 
 to fall victims to this passion. Goethe's best dra- 
 matic scenes came through his love for Frederica, 
 and if he had written his enthraUing passion for 
 his drunken cook-wife he would probably have 
 done infinitely better work than by speculating on 
 theories of light. He knew a great deal about 
 passion and its infinite forgiveness and indulgence 
 and very little about colour-waves. 
 
 Dante, too, has told us how easily gentle hearts 
 are moved to love : 
 
 Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende. 
 
 And Beatrice had to reproach him with many 
 infidelities. 
 
 Michelangelo, who was certainly strong among 
 the strongest, had to confess his utter inability to 
 free himself from the bonds of desire: 
 
 Amor, se tu se' Dio 
 
 Scioglimi, deh ! delF alma i lacci tuoi. 
 
 It is no disgrace to our gentle Shakespeare to 
 have been enmeshed in the same net, for no one 
 ever turned his thralldom to such account. His 
 passion can be studied in drama after drama, the 
 mere names of which have become tragic symbols 
 in the consciousness of humanity. 
 
 For the first three or four years of his intimacy 
 163 
 
The Wo7nen of Shakespeare 
 
 he continually painted both realistic and idealistic 
 portraits of his mistress. About the year 1600 
 the idealistic portraits cease. The reason is in- 
 dicated. In the last sonnet to his dark love one 
 line wells up from the depths of despair: 
 
 And all my honest faith in thee is lost. 
 
 From this time on he gave up trying to idealize | 
 Mary Fitton. A little later and he will paint her 
 to the life cruelly, strip her to the skin and 
 scourge her with his contempt and hate till we are 
 forced to pity her and take sides against him as 
 a slanderer and a caricaturist who has forgotten 
 in his jealous rage the high impartiality of the ar- 
 tist. But all the while the idealizing tendency 
 was in him, and if he could not employ it in paint- 
 ing Mary Fitton as Julia or Portia or Beatrice, 
 he had to use it on imaginary figures. His mis- 
 tress's faithlessness made him long for winnowed 
 purity and devoted affection, and he gave name 
 if not reality to this desire of his nature in 
 Ophelia, Desdemona, and Cordelia. . 
 
 More than almost any other great artist, Shake- 
 speare needed the support of actual life. Give 
 him the realistic features and hewill paint a death- 
 less portrait, now of Hotspur, now of the Nurse, 
 but without the help of reality he floats about in 
 
 164 
 
Julius CcBsar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 the blue. His Ophelia and his Desdemona have 
 no redeeming vices or weaknesses whatsoever. 
 Ophelia can only weep and go crazy when Ham- 
 let insults her, and when Othello outrages and 
 strikes Desdemona she too weeps and forgives 
 him, while wondering what her trickling eyes may 
 portend. Mary Fitton's high temper and mas- 
 culine strength put Shakespeare out of love with 
 spirit and courage and marked individuality in 
 women: Ophelia and Desdemona are mere ab- 
 stractions of patience and affection — pale sister- 
 souls, in fact, or bloodless sister-effigies; hardly 
 a taint of earthly temper or tincture of warm hu- 
 manity in either of them. 
 
 In Twelfth Night we see the first tendency to 
 vague idealization coming to view. Viola, with 
 her resignation and patience, is the first sketch, 
 so to speak, of Ophelia. But the outline wavers; 
 '' she never told her love," we are assured in a 
 famous passage, while a little later we learn that y^ 
 she told her love for Duke Orsino again and 
 again. 
 
 In contempt 'of my efforts the professors will 
 not see any connection between Shakespeare's ex- 
 periences as a lover and his Hamlet. Professor 
 Herford says : " Nothing that we know of Shake- 
 speare's personal history really explains the start- 
 
 165 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 ling and sudden intensity of personal accent in 
 Hamlet or the changed outlook upon the world 
 which here first becomes apparent." One can 
 only stare at this black diamond. Shakespeare 
 has sung his love in every stage: the young de- 
 light of it in Juliet and Portia; the courtings and 
 the deceptions in Rosaline and Rosalind. He has 
 painted his jealous misery for us in the sonnets; 
 the *' potions " he drank of "Siren tears"; the 
 *' hell of time " he endured. As Brutus he is in 
 love with despair and goes to death willingly. 
 Yet the self-elected guides find in all this no ex- 
 planation of what they are pleased to call his 
 '' changed outlook upon the world," which they 
 declare " first becomes apparent " In Hamlet, 
 Let us now consider this, the second of the great 
 tragedies. 
 
 Hamlet Is generally dated through its refer- 
 ence to the success of the child-players about 
 1601: it follows immediately on Julius Casar 
 and the sonnets. 
 
 As I have shown elsewhere, the dominant pas- 
 sions of Hamlet are jealousy of his mother's sin 
 and a desire to revenge himself on his uncle, his 
 l"»vc f r ■ ^ '^^^'1 i*^ merely Incidental. The most 
 marked peculiarity in the play is so grotesque 
 that it shocks one: no son ever spoke of a motb- 
 
 166 
 
Julius CcBsar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 cr's unfaith with the passionate bitterness of 
 Hamlet. In spite of the Ghost's warning to him 
 not to taint his mind or contrive aught against 
 his mother, but to leave her to Heaven and her 
 own remorse, Hamlet has gone about with 
 thoughts of murdering her. The mere idea is 
 astounding, but here are his words: 
 
 Let me be cruel, not unnatural 
 
 I will speak daggers to her; but use none. 
 
 And a line or two later the thought crops up 
 again. He Is far more bitter than his murdered 
 father. 
 
 It Is manifest from his extravagance of anger 
 that Hamlet-Shakespeare Is thinking of his mis- 
 tress's lechery and not of his mother's; he cries 
 at her: 
 
 Have you eyes.'* 
 Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed. 
 And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes.'' . . . 
 
 . . . What devil was't 
 That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind ? 
 Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, 
 Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all. 
 Or but a sickly part of one true sense 
 Could not so mope. 
 O shame! where is thy blush? . . . 
 
 Maddened with jealousy, he scourges himself 
 167 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 with his own lewd imaginings as Othello and 
 Posthumus scourge themselves. It is only a 
 professor or commentator, or some expert in 
 cloistered ignorance, who could believe that a 
 man feels this intensity of jealous rage about a 
 mother's sin. The very idea is worse than ab- 
 surd. It is one's own passion-torture that speaks 
 in such words as these. And Hamlet strikes this 
 note again and again with the persistence of in- 
 cipient mania, and again and again finds death- 
 less, painting w^ords for his insane jealousy. 
 Though the Queen begs him to " speak no 
 more," he raves on: 
 
 . . . Nay, but to live 
 In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 
 Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love 
 Over the nasty sty — 
 
 It is the act that maddens him, as it always 
 maddened Shakespeare. But bitter as is Ham- 
 let's view of his mother's (Mary Fitton's) sin, it 
 is still the bitterness of disappointed love and is 
 not without hope: he will have her repent, re- 
 frain from adultery and be pure and good again: 
 
 . . Confess yourself to heaven; 
 Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; 
 And do not spread the compost on the weeds 
 To make them ranker. . . . 
 Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. 
 
 168 
 
Julius CcBsar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 Hamlet. O, throw away the worser part of it. 
 
 And live the purer with the other half. 
 Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; 
 Assume a virtue, if you have it not . . . 
 For use almost can change the stamp of 
 nature. . . . 
 
 It is all directed at his mistress: he still hopes 
 for her reformation; but he sees no good what- 
 ever in the King. The King (Herbert) is mil- 
 dewed and foul in comparison with his modest 
 poet-rival — *' a satyr to Hyperion " : 
 
 A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe 
 Of your precedent lord. . . . 
 
 The extravagance of the comparison shows 
 the personal feeling which quickens this whole 
 play. Take even what the Ghost says, and read 
 it carefully: 
 
 Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast. 
 With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,- 
 wicked wit and gifts that have the power 
 So to seduce ! — won to his shameful lust 
 The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen: 
 O Hamlet, what a falling off was there ! . . . 
 
 The italics are mine. It is all in rha^acterj If 
 you will at first, but it soon shrills out of char- 
 acter: 
 
 ... to decline 
 Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor 
 To those of mine! . . . 
 
 169 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 This surely gives us rather Shakespeare's real 
 feeling towards Pembroke than the Ghost's, and 
 then we come to a reflection which is certainly 
 Shakespeare's: 
 
 But virtue, as it never will be moved, 
 Tliough lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, 
 So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd. 
 Will sate itself in a celestial bad. 
 And prey on garbage. . . . 
 
 The chief faults In the play can be explained 
 naturally by this hypothesis of mine, and by this 
 hypothesis alone. Hearing Polonius behind the 
 arras, Hamlet plucks out his sword and kills 
 him, mistaking him for the King. Kindly, hu- 
 mane, reflective Hamlet would naturally be filled 
 with remorse for this rash, thoughtless deed, 
 and at first this Is the note Shakespeare strikes: 
 Hamlet echoes his mother and calls It a " bloody 
 deed; " " I do repent," he says; but later, when 
 we expect the cooler blood of regret to come to 
 full utterance, he talks of Polonius with incred- 
 ible harsh contempt: 
 
 I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. . . . 
 
 One Is shocked, appalled by this unnatural cruelty 
 of Hamlet, which Is totally out of character. It 
 seems to me that Shakespeare Is here again 
 
 170 
 
Julius CcBsar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 thinking of Herbert, the real object of his hate, 
 whom often in imagination he had killed with 
 one quick thrust and dismissed from memory as 
 " a foolish, prating knave." 
 
 There are scores of proofs of the very obvious 
 fact that Shakespeare has got a passionate in- 
 tensity into this somewhat unreal tragedy by 
 identifying the chief actors in it with his rival 
 and his mistress. The discrepancies in the play 
 are not otherwise to be explained: for example, 
 /we all expect froiTL Hamlet some expression of 
 divine tenderness for Ophelia, but the scenes 
 with the pure devoted girl whom he is supposed 
 to love are not half realized, are nothing like so 
 intense as the scenes with the guilty mother. Yet 
 love should surely be stronger than jealousy of 
 one's mother. Shakespeare did not take interest 
 enough in Ophelia to give her flesh and blood. 
 
 Another jar which plays informer: Laertes 
 finds the best word for his unhappy sister: she 
 turned everything '' to favour and to pretti- 
 ness." Why, then, as soon as she goes mad 
 does Shakespeare make her talk smut? Why 
 does even Flamlet talk suggestively to her in the 
 theatre scene? Of course I shall be told that 
 all this is due to Shakespeare's deep insight into 
 human nature; but in a slight and charming 
 
 171 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 sketch such as Ophelia was meant to be, this ob- 
 scene coarseness Is a blunder. The truth Is, 
 while writing this play Shakespeare was writhing 
 In jealous misery; he sees the sexual act every- 
 where, and defiles his heroine with his mistress's 
 lewdness. 
 
 At their first meeting Hamlet talks smut to 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern though suggestive 
 speech Is not In tune with brooding melancholy. 
 The fact is we can trace In him the beginning of 
 the erotic mania which Is to be found In almost 
 every tragedy from this time on. I shall not la- 
 bour this statement; it Is self-evident, and the 
 proofs of it will have to be repeated again and 
 again. 
 
 After his betrayal Shakespeare went about 
 nursing his jealousy to monomania — nursing, too, 
 bitter thoughts of revenge on Herbert, though 
 he knew well enough that he did not piossess the 
 desperate resolution to carry them Into act. 
 Lackey-like, he had to admit that mere regard 
 for position and power would give him stop: 
 Herbert was too far above him: 
 
 There's such divinity doth hedge a king 
 That treason can but peep to what it would. 
 
 But Shakespeare felt very acutely that any young 
 
 172 
 
Julius Ccesar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 nobleman in his position would have had no 
 scruples on the matter; Laertes strides to his 
 revenge with instant, conscienceless resolve. 
 Shakespeare knew that his own gentleness and 
 dislike of violence were in themselves nobler: 
 
 The rarer action is 
 In virtue than in vengeance. . . . 
 
 And thus Hamlet becomes more lovable to us 
 through his very hesitation and horror of blood- 
 shed. 
 
 Hamlet is a magnificent study of the literary 
 temperament, and the picture Is made dramatic 
 by the passionate realization of the hero's long- 
 ing for jealousy and revenge. 
 
 Hamlet's love for Ophelia is scarcely strong 
 enough to deserve the name, but his jealousy is a 
 raging, burning fever. 
 
 Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder 
 of sinners? 
 
 Is all he can say to Ophelia, but to his mother he 
 raves as one possessed: 
 
 Not this^ by no means, that I bid you do: 
 Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; 
 Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; 
 And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, 
 Or paddling in your neck wath his damn'd fingers . . • 
 
 173 
 
The fVomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 The jealous rage is already almost maniacal in 
 intensity. 
 
 Othello Is a far finer and more complete study 
 of jealousy and revenge than Hamlet, The jeal- 
 ous rage of the sonnets is lifted In Hamlet to a 
 higher pitch, and in Othello is further intensified 
 to deadly menace and murder by a superb and 
 natural plot. Hamlet^s jealousy is unnatural; but 
 Othello's jealousy of Desdemona Is almost in- 
 evitable; It Is reason-founded on difference of | 
 colour, education, and surroundings, and is | 
 whipped to madness by vile and envious sugges- J 
 tlon. 
 
 Hamlet is Shakespeare himself, while Othello 
 at first is a marionette of v/hom we have no In- 
 timate understanding. I have pointed out else- 
 where that Othello Is a fair sketch from the out- 
 side of a man of action until he becomes jealous, 
 when he Is used as the mere mouthpiece of Shake- 
 speare's own passion. For a master of men 
 Othello Is a surprisingly apt subject of jealousy, 
 being exceedingly quick of apprehension and 
 easily convinced on mere surmise. He passes, 
 too, at once to vengeance, and will glut his hate 
 not only on Desdemona, but on Casslo. But the 
 quick change In the painting of Othello from the 
 bluff Captain to the poet-lover is not so soul- 
 
 174 
 
Julius CcBsar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 revealing as the fact that in Othello Shakespeare 
 has given us the finest words for desire and jeal- 
 ousy in the language : 
 
 . . . O thou weed 
 Who art so lovely-fair and smell'st so sweet. 
 That the sense aches at thee ! 
 
 Passion never found a more splendid phrase; 
 and it does not stand alone. When Desdemona 
 lands Cassio cries in Shakespeare's very voice: 
 
 The riches of the ship is come on shore. 
 
 And a little later Othello calls Desdemona : 
 
 My soul's joy . . . 
 and again: 
 
 Excellent wretch. 
 
 And if desire is enthrallingly rendered, jealousy 
 finds an even intenser note: Othello's cry is 
 astounding: 
 
 I had been happy, if the general camp. 
 Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body 
 So I had nothing known. . . . 
 
 That " sweet body " is incomparable. 
 
 The plain proof that Shakespeare in all this is 
 putting himself in Othello's place and speaking 
 of Mary Fitton is at hand. Othello praises 
 Desdemona as a " sweet creature ... an ad- 
 
 175 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 mirable musician " : " O, she will sing the sav- 
 ageness out of a bear: of so high and plenteous 
 wit and invention." 
 
 Now consider these qualities. We never knew 
 before that Desdemona was an '' admirable mu- 
 sician "; while we have already learned from the 
 clown that Othello " does not greatly care to hear 
 music." How are we to explain this manifest 
 contradiction? Shakespeare makes all his men 
 of action, such as Hotspur and Harry V., dislike 
 music, and he begins by lending Othello the same 
 defect; but here in his jealous rage he forgets his 
 puppet's qualities, thinking only of himself. He 
 loved music, as he has shown in a score of plays, 
 and his " dark lady " of the sonnets often 
 charmed him with her playing. Sonnet 128 be- 
 gins : 
 
 How oft when thou, my music, music play*st. 
 
 It is Mary Fitton who* Shakespeare feels could 
 sing the " savageness out of a bear." Fancy, 
 too, telling us that poor, patient, superstitious 
 Desdemona was of " high and plenteous wit and 
 invention." Shakespeare's Rosaline was witty, 
 as we know; his "dark lady" of the sonnets 
 too; but hardly Desdemona. Evidently Shake- 
 speare is here thinking of his own mistress. 
 
 176 
 
Julius CcBsar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 As soon as jealousy Is touched upon, Shake- 
 speare puts himself unconsciously In Othello's 
 place and Desdemona becomes his wanton love. 
 From that moment to the end of the play Shake- 
 speare Is Othello, and there are no pages In all 
 literature of a more Intimate self-revealing. By 
 his gentle fair-mindedness alone we ought to rec- 
 ognize him: 
 
 O lago, the pity of it; the pity of it, lago ! 
 
 But In truth the whole passion Is the passion of 
 jealousy as Shakespeare conceived It. As I have 
 shown in my book, The Man Shakespeare, Post- 
 humus, an alter ego of Shakespeare, speaks of 
 Imogen exactly as Othello speaks of Desdemona. 
 Hamlet raves about his mother's fault In pre- 
 cisely the same strain as the King In The Win- 
 ter's Tale raves about his wife's supposed slip; 
 they all picture the act and excite themselves to 
 mad rage by their own imagining. In all these 
 plays the hero suspects some women of faithless- 
 ness, and usually the woman he loves. 
 
 There is another passage in Othello which al- 
 ludes, I believe, to Shakespeare's connection with 
 Mary Fitton, and gives us, to a certain extent, 
 his explanation of why she played false to him. 
 lago says: 
 
 177 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 When the blood is made dull with the act of sport, 
 there should be again to inflame it, and to give satiety a 
 fresh appetite, loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, 
 manners and beauties. . . . 
 
 All this applies to the Moor if you will, but it 
 applies to Shakespeare, too, and his position. In 
 that word " manners " there is to me a glance 
 at young Herbert and Mary Fitton, else why was 
 it brought in? — for there is no hint of any such 
 difference between Othello and Desdemona, 
 though such a difference could be presumed. I 
 find an intimate thoughtfulness in the words, 
 which shows me they are personal: they supply 
 the reason, too, why Shakespeare should handle 
 this theme of the inferiority of an older man to 
 the woman he loves, and fulfil it with such intense 
 passion. Like his Othello, Shakespeare loved 
 ** not wisely but too well." 
 
 It is, perhaps, worth while to notice that even 
 in the surge and rage of jealous madness Othello- 
 Shakespeare remains an Englishman and a mor- 
 alist, or, as a foreigner might say, a hypocrite. 
 Othello will kill Desdemona with the sword of 
 " justice," will murder even from a high, unsel- 
 fish motive — to prevent her betraying " more 
 men." 
 
 But as I have said elsewhere, what interests us 
 178 
 
Julius CcBsar: Hamlet: Othello 
 
 in Othello is not his strength but his weakness, 
 Shakespeare's weakness — his passion and pity, 
 his torture, rage, jealousy, and remorse, the suc- 
 cessive stages of his soul's calvary. 
 
 Macbeth I need only glance at here, for I have 
 handled it elsewhere at great length in order to 
 prove that Macbeth is Hamlet over again in 
 every quality and every defect. Lady Macbeth 
 is just as manifestly an embodiment of the 
 strength and resolution of the poet's mistress. 
 In fact, these are the dominant characteristics 
 which Shakespeare so admired in his "dark lady." 
 Take sonnet 150: 
 
 O, from what power hast thou this powerful might 
 With insufficiency my heart to sway? . . . 
 
 Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, 
 That in the very refuse of thy deeds 
 There is such strength and warranties of skill 
 That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? . . . 
 
 But in spite of being closely connected with 
 Shakespeare himself through both the hero and 
 the heroine, Macbeth as a play lies on the con- 
 fines of Shakespeare's activity: it reminds me of 
 Richard III. The action is in no way suited to 
 Shakespeare's character, and though he discovers 
 his inmost feelings to us in the person of Mac- 
 
 179 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 beth, our sympathy is perpetually dammed by 
 the conviction that this literary, lovable, humane, 
 pious Shakespeare-Macbeth would not have mur- 
 dered a fly, much less the kindly, courteous Dun- 
 can. 
 
 Lady Macbeth is not one of Shakespeare's 
 happier creations. It is impossible to make a 
 woman credible to us by lending her a man's 
 resolution and courage. True, Lady Macbeth 
 breaks down after the murder; but the fact is 
 we know hardly anything about her. Did she 
 even love Macbeth? She Is merely a marble- 
 hard outline like the heroine of a Greek tragedy. 
 
 The interest of Macbeth is not so much the 
 Interest of character or even the Interest of 
 drama, though the action is exciting enough in 
 all conscience and well developed, but the inter- 
 est of divine poetry. Shakespeare has lent his 
 alter ego Macbeth his own singing robe, and has 
 embroidered it with magnificent lyric after lyric 
 of his own disillusion and despair. 
 
 180 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 LEAR AND TIMON : EROTIC MANIA 
 
 rriHE tragedies which follow after the sonnets 
 are distinguished by ever-increasing passion 
 and bitterness. The mere names are like steps 
 leading down into the dark places of desire and 
 despair: Julius Casar, Hamlet, Othello. 
 
 Macbeth is more bitter than any of these; but 
 it has no lust in it, and consequently is not so 
 complete an index to Shakespeare's soul. 
 
 Then follow two tragedies whose action has 
 nothing on earth to do with passion: the ingrati- 
 tude of Lear's daughters has no connection with 
 sex, and Timon's misanthropy is of generosity 
 pushed to an extreme and not of desire. 
 
 The interest of these tragedies does not de- 
 pend mainly on the portraiture of women, still 
 the pictures of women In them throw light on 
 the author's mental condition and the Intense 
 passion of both dramas Is derived directly from 
 Shakespeare's disappointments with his wanton 
 mistress. 
 
 181 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 With that common sense which Is the obverse 
 of insight, Tolstoi has pointed out the faults in 
 Lear; what a foolish old man was Lear, he says, 
 not to have known his daughters better I It Is 
 just this foolish blindness which Shakespeare 
 wishes to exaggerate in order to deepen for us 
 the pathos of Lear's disproportionate punish- 
 ment: 
 
 ... I am a man 
 More sinned against than sinning. 
 
 I have been hotly criticized for speaking of the 
 " erotic mania " which Shakespeare puts to view 
 in Lear. But no milder words would render the 
 intensity of my impression. Gonerll and Regan 
 are both wantons and both In heat for the base 
 Edmund: Gonerll in especial, by reason of her 
 bold passion and resolution, reminds me of Lady 
 Macbeth, and so at one remove recalls Shake- 
 speare's dark mistress. She talks of her hus- 
 band Albany, just as Lady Macbeth talked of 
 her husband. Lady Macbeth said: 
 
 Yet do I fear thy nature. 
 It is too full o' the milk of human kindness 
 To catch the nearest way. 
 
 And this Gonerll speaks contemptuously of Al- 
 bany's *' milky gentleness," and declares that he 
 
 will be : 
 
 188 
 
Lear and Timon: Erotic Mania 
 
 . . . more attask'd for want of wisdom 
 Than praised for harmful mildness. 
 
 But It Is not the unconditioned lechery of Goneril 
 and Regan alone that gives Lear Its character 
 of erotic mania. Nearly every character In the 
 play talks bawd on every possible occasion, 
 though It has nothing to do with the action and 
 IS wholly out of keeping with the seriousness of 
 the tragedy. 
 
 Edmund the villain begins by attacking man's 
 hypocrisy In attributing his own faults to " planet- 
 ary influence " — *' an admirable evasion of whore- 
 master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the 
 charge of a star! " Then the fool, who is the 
 mere embodiment of common sense, loses no op- 
 portunity of showing the same bias: In the fifth 
 scene of the first act he begins without provoca- 
 tion: 
 
 She that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure, 
 Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter. 
 
 Edgar, too, who, as I have elsewhere shown. 
 Is another alter ego of Shakespeare himself, Is 
 almost as loose-lipped. He tells Lear he was a 
 serving-man who " served the lust of my mis- 
 tress's heart, and did the act of darkness with 
 her," and as if that were not enough, goes on to 
 assert that he " out-paramoured the Turk," and 
 
 183 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 finally warns poor old Lear, of all men in the 
 world, to keep his " foot out of brothels " and 
 his " hand out of plackets." And silver-haired 
 Lear himself, through whom Shakespeare speaks 
 in the last acts as ingenuously as through Edgar, 
 is obsessed with the same rank thoughts. When 
 Gloucester asks : 
 
 Is't not the king.^ 
 
 Lear answers: 
 
 Ay, every inch a king: 
 When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. 
 I pardon that man's life. What was thy cause? 
 Adultery .^ 
 
 Thou shalt not die : die for adultery ! No : 
 The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly 
 Does lecher in my sight. 
 
 Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son 
 Was kinder to his father than my daughters 
 Got 'tween the lawful sheets. 
 To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers. 
 Behold yond simpering dame. 
 Whose face between her forks presageth snow; 
 That minces virtue, and does shake the head 
 To hear of pleasure's name; 
 The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to't 
 With a more riotous appetite. 
 Down from the waist they are Centaurs, 
 Though woman all above: 
 But to the girdle do the gods inherit. 
 Beneath is all the fiends' ; 
 
 There's hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit. 
 Burning, scalding, stench, consumption ; fie, fie, fie ! pah, 
 pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to 
 sweeten my imagination. . . . 
 
 184 
 
Lear and Timon: Erotic Mania 
 
 No wonder he begs for civet to sweeten his im- 
 agination. The whole subject is dragged in by 
 the hair; it has nothing to do with his age or 
 place or condition; in fact, it is out of tune with 
 all three. And Lear's next speech is just as bad; 
 
 Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! 
 
 Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; 
 
 Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind 
 
 For which thou whipp'st her. . . . 
 
 The truth is, his mistress's faithlessness has got 
 on Shakespeare's nerves and his very thoughts 
 are tainted with her wantonness: it is not his 
 daughters' ingratitude that Lear-Shakespeare is 
 thinking of any more than Hamlet was thinking 
 of his mother's lechery, it is his faithless mistress 
 who has infected the poet's imagination. Miss 
 Fitton had got into Shakespeare's blood, and he 
 lends Lear the very word for the obsession: 
 
 ... a disease that's in my flesh, 
 Which I must needs call mine: thou art a boil, 
 A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle 
 In my corrupted blood. . . . 
 
 As if to convince us that this explanation is the 
 true one, and that Shakespeare is always thinking 
 of his wanton-mistress, the fool tells us that " he's 
 mad who trusts in the tameness of a wolf . . . 
 
 185 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 a hoy's love, or a whore' s oath.*' The italics are 
 mine. 
 
 The tragedy of Lear is based upon Shake- 
 speare's understanding of his insane, blind trust 
 in men and women; but the intense passion of the 
 play, as I must insist again, springs from erotic 
 mania, and from the consciousness that he is 
 growing too old for love's lists. Perhaps Shake- 
 speare's imagination never carried him higher 
 than when Lear appeals to the heavens because 
 they, too, are old: 
 
 . . . O heavens. 
 If you do love old men, if your sweet sway 
 Allow obedience, if yourselves are old. 
 Make it your cause. 
 
 Timon breeds new thoughts in me; it is a poor 
 play, and yet it increases my admiration of Shake- 
 speare's wisdom, and in proportion diminishes 
 my already chastened opinion of his commenta- 
 tors. 
 
 The poets and professors are all agreed that 
 " large tracts of Timon are not the work of 
 Shakespeare." The critics by trade have 
 mapped it out indeed, ascribing these lines to 
 him and those to someone else. Long ago I 
 found reason to attribute much more of it to 
 Shakespeare than was generally believed. But 
 
 186 
 
Lear and Timon: Erotic Mania 
 
 the Incredible audacity of the professors, their 
 unanimity, their serene conviction imposed on 
 me; for years I believed that there must be some 
 armature of truth to uphold the great jelly-like 
 figure of assertion. I was first brought to doubt 
 the teachers by the fact that in the very passages 
 they all denied to Shakespeare, I found indubit- 
 able proof of his work. Time and a long expe- 
 rience of mandarin-methods have only strength- 
 ened and extended this belief. 
 
 The more I read Timon the more convinced I 
 am that It is all Shakespeare's, and Shakespeare's 
 alone, from beginning to end. 
 
 My readers, I think, will trust me now without 
 proof; but as I go through the play selecting the 
 most characteristic passages, I must just notice 
 the fact that the very finest work is ascribed to 
 the " unknown writer " by all the commentators. 
 The curious thing Is that the critics are unani- 
 mous in rejecting, not Shakespeare's vulgarities 
 and inanities, but the gems of his thought, the 
 rays of purest insight In him. Timon Is all his, 
 I say again deliberately. The weakest work In 
 the play, the word disputes with Apemantus and 
 others, are in his manner; the undramatic mo- 
 notony of It Is due to his exceeding bitterness of 
 soul. For instance, Timon's gentlemen go to 
 
 187 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 borrow for their lord: when they're refused, in- 
 stead of smiling at their own wisdom in finding 
 expectancy fulfilled, they curse the ungrateful 
 friends in Timon's own vein. Life has so bruised 
 Shakespeare that he is one ache; his very soul is 
 sore. Love and friendship, which he held most 
 sacred, have betrayed him; his friend has proved 
 a vulgar cad, his love a wanton. The gold which 
 he has always tried to despise, he now sees is the 
 master-key of every lock in the world: 
 
 This yellow slave* 
 Will knit and break religions; bless the accursed^ 
 Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves 
 And give them title, knee and approbation 
 With senators on the bench: this is it 
 That makes the wapper'd widow wed again; 
 She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores 
 Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 
 To the April day again. . . . 
 
 The disillusion bred new wisdom in Shakespeare. 
 Instead of patriotism he has condemnation now 
 for all countries; Alcibiades generalizes the 
 thought : 
 
 'Tis honour with most lands to be at odds. 
 
 * It is almost incredible, but this passage has been se- 
 lected by Professor Herford as a specimen of the " unknown " 
 collaborator's " facile rhetoric " and is contrasted with Shake- 
 speare's " close-packed pregnant verses." ( !) 
 
 188 
 
Lear and Timon: Erotic Mania 
 
 Careless of character, Shakespeare lends his 
 deepest ray of insight to a secondary person, the 
 first Senator: 
 
 He's truly valiant that can wisely suffer 
 The worst that man can breathe ^ and make his wrongs 
 His outsides^ to wear them like his raiment carelessly 
 And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart. 
 To bring it into danger. 
 
 But, like all the rest of us, Shakespeare's insight 
 went further than his practice; he saw plainly 
 that injuries should be taken lightly, but he could 
 not help preferring them to his heart's health: 
 Timon is one long moan of agony. 
 
 The nature of Timon-Shakespeare's suffering 
 cannot be mistaken: it is his men friends who be- 
 tray Timon, but it is the women Timon chiefly 
 rails against, the women who in the play have 
 
 * This is another passage denied to Shakespeare by all the 
 commentators. It is one of the furthest throws of his 
 thought; the pearl which he found in the depths, when the 
 
 I bitter waters of disillusion had quite gone over him. It opens 
 a new chapter in modern morality. " Forgive your enemies," 
 said paganism, because fighting with them will waste your 
 
 J time and energy. "Forget your injuries," says Shakespeare. 
 On no account nurse them. Brooding over wrongs hardens 
 the heart and degrades the nature. Take your buffets lightly; 
 wear your wrongs as you do your garments — carelessly, for 
 
 ; your own sake. Shakespeare's commentators have not under- 
 stood this, simply because they do net know him, are not on his 
 level, and no man can see over his own head. 
 
 189 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 done him no wrong. It Is outside the scope of 
 the play to curse them; the only explanation is 
 that it was a woman who in life wounded Shake- 
 speare most deeply. Just as Goneril and Regan 
 are painted as hard, cruel, lustful prostitutes, so 
 Phrynia and Timandra are here caricatured as 
 the refuse of humanity, without any desire except 
 for gold. 
 
 The erotic mania of Lear shrills in Timon to 
 a scream: 
 
 . . . strike me the counterfeit matron, — 
 It is her habit only that is honest. 
 Herself 's a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek 
 Make soft thy trenchant sword. . . . 
 
 And again : 
 
 Consumptions sow 
 
 In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins, 
 
 And mar men's spurring. Crack the lawyer's voice. 
 
 That he may never more false title plead. 
 
 Nor sound his quillets shrilly: hoar the flamen. 
 
 That scolds against the quality of flesh. 
 
 And not believes himself: down with the nose, 
 
 Down with it flat; take the bridge quite away 
 
 Of him that, his particular to foresee. 
 
 Smells from the general weal: make curl'd-pate ruffians 
 
 bald; 
 And let the unscarr'd braggarts of the war 
 Derive some pain from you: plague all; 
 That your activity may defeat and quell 
 The source of all erection. ... 
 
 190 
 
Lear and Timon: Erotic Mania 
 
 His madness knows no distinction: " the damned 
 earth " even is the 
 
 . . . common whore of mankind,* that put'st odds 
 Among the rout of nations . . . 
 
 But even in Timon Shakespeare shows himself 
 impressionable-quick and most generous. As 
 soon as Timon finds his steward honest, he throws 
 off his misanthropy and cries : 
 
 Forgive my general and exceptless rashness 
 You perpetual-sober gods ! I do proclaim 
 One honest man. . . . 
 
 This sharp return on himself with its superb ex- 
 pression is denied to Shakespeare by all commen- 
 tators; yet there is nothing in all his works more 
 characteristic. 
 
 These critics all suffer from Germanic stodgi- 
 ness. One instance may stand for a thousand. 
 Shakespeare found two epitaphs attributed to 
 Timon : one in which Timon declares he will be 
 nameless, the other gives his name: both are 
 characteristic: 
 
 Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft: 
 Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs 
 left! 
 
 * This passage, too, is attributed to the " unknown writer " 
 by the cry of critics. 
 
 191 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate: 
 Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here 
 thy gait. 
 
 Shakespeare put both these epitaphs in, one after 
 the other: he does not seem to have minded the 
 contradiction in them : he probably saw it and in- 
 tended to correct It, and then forgot all about it ; 
 but the commentators have buzzed about it ever 
 since, and from this high and rank morsel have 
 dragged infected feet over the whole play: " Two 
 hands," they cry, " two hands plainly at work." 
 Two hands If you will, gentlemen, but both mani- 
 festly Shakespeare's. 
 
 All through these five tragedies, except per- 
 haps in Othello, we have been moving on the out- 
 skirts, so to speak, of the tornado of Shake- 
 speare's passion. Now we come to the storm- 
 centre. Shakespeare has been deceived again 
 and again by the woman he loved: what picture 
 does he paint of her? It is the question of ques- 
 tions for him and for us. By his answer we shall 
 be able to measure his very soul. Tortured, 
 cheated, betrayed, his vanity wounded to the 
 quick, his affection scorned, the best In him de- 
 spised; — If he can still keep his soul intact and 
 render righteous judgment — paint her as she was, 
 the good as well as the evil — then in him, on this 
 
 192 
 
Lear and Timon: Erotic Mania 
 
 artist-side at least, and there it no higher, we 
 touch the zenith of humanity. 
 
 He was able to reach this height about the 
 false friend, Lord Herbert, who had stolen his 
 love from him. Shakespeare pictures Herbert- 
 Bertram for us very fairly; he shows us first Ber- 
 tram's impatient eagerness to leave the court: the 
 boy-fighter will not be a squire of dames, " the 
 forehorse to a smock," as he himself puts it; 
 he will risk the King's displeasure and go to the 
 wars. And when in the field, he wins golden 
 opinions on all sides: Diana even, who rejects 
 his suit, tells us that " they say the French Count 
 has done most honourable service," and the 
 widow replies that he has " taken their greatest 
 commander and with his own hand he slew the 
 Duke's brother." Bertram, though young, is a 
 born soldier of proved courage, as the English 
 aristocrat often is. 
 
 True, Shakespeare puts in the shadows, pur- 
 ple-black shadows to balance these high lights: 
 Bertram has a low opinion of women, is inexpres- 
 sibly coarse and common, but we feel that the 
 portrait of him is a fair one, astonishingly true 
 to life in its mingled good and evil. 
 
 Was Shakespeare as fair to Mary Fitton? 
 Bertram-Herbert, we know, betrayed him *' in 
 
 193 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 the wanton way of youth." But why was Mary 
 Fitton faithless? From what we know of Shake- 
 speare we should be Inclined to guess that he 
 would ascribe Mary FItton's preference of others 
 to snobbishness. He will lay the flattering unc- 
 tion to his soul, we imagine, that she preferred 
 Herbert because he was a lord of great place. 
 But no ! this is not even hinted. Manifestly 
 Mary Fitton was well born enough, confident 
 enough In herself and her superb womanhood, to 
 judge all men, peers, and players alike, on the 
 human level. She must have been a great crea- 
 ture; for not to be a snob In England Is a rarer 
 distinction than any title. The next disability 
 that would occur to Shakespeare would naturally 
 be his age. Mary Fitton Is young, he might say, 
 and therefore prefers young courtiers to old 
 mummers. But his Othello expressly asks him- 
 self this question and answers It: 
 
 ... or for I am declined 
 Into the vale of years — yet that's not much. 
 
 And In fact It was " not much " ; for when Shake- 
 speare first met Mistress Fitton, though she was 
 only seventeen or eighteen, he was only thirty- 
 three. It Is true that when Othello was written 
 the discrepancy showed worse: she was twenty- 
 
 194 
 
Lear and Timoji: Erotic Mania 
 
 four and he was nearly forty; still "that's not 
 much " we are uicllned to echo; though this harp- 
 ing on his age, indicates probably a certain phys- 
 ical weakness. 
 
 Why, then, did the maid of honour prefer this 
 lord and that knight to Shakespeare, who adored 
 her? Was the fault all Mary Fitton's? Was it 
 all due to her sensuality? Shakespeare says so 
 and the evidence against her at first blush seems 
 overwhelming. At the very first sight of her as 
 Rosaline in Romeo and JuUet he credits her with 
 Dian's wit and cold chastity; but even this Rosa- 
 line, he notices, is not altogether obdurate and im- 
 mediately afterwards, as Rosaline again in Love's 
 Labour's Lost, he declares her to be a wanton: 
 
 Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed 
 Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard. 
 
 Again and again through Biron, Bertram, and 
 others, he attributes to her this cunning outside 
 of cold pride, gilding mere wantonness. The 
 combination is so uncommon that it might alone 
 serve to identify his mistress as readily as her 
 white complexion and pitch-black eyes. But al- 
 lowing Mary Fitton to have been as sensual as a 
 monkey, she must still have had some prefer- 
 ences: does Shakespeare mark any? How does 
 
 195 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Ke explain to himself his own conquest of her? 
 Just before he met her he was always boasting, 
 as we saw : 
 
 That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man. 
 If with his tongue he cannot win a woman. 
 
 Was it his honeyed flatteries seduced her or 
 his handsome person or his devotion? Did she 
 know that she was beloved by the greatest man 
 in the world? Did she divine on his forehead 
 the crown of crowns? Or was she too far below 
 him to have any inkling of the truth, as Fanny 
 Brawne was too far below Keats? Above all, 
 why, loving her, did Shakespeare fail to hold her? 
 We must now see if any or all of these riddles 
 may be answered. 
 
 Whatever the answer may be, it must be looked 
 for in his last portraits of his wonderful gipsy; 
 in Troilus and Cressida and in Antony and Cleo- 
 patra. Before considering these plays let us 
 first glance back over the way we have come. 
 
 196 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA : FALSE CRESSID '' THE 
 
 heart's blood of beauty;" love's 
 
 INVISIBLE soul 
 
 Tl rE have traced Shakespeare's love from Its 
 ^ ^ dawning in Rosaline and Juliet, through 
 realistic portraits like that of Rosaline in Lovers 
 Lahour^s Lost, and idealistic sketches such as 
 Julia, Portia, Beatrice, and Rosalind to its noon- 
 tide in his passion for the " dark lady " of the 
 sonnets. 
 
 Here at length he finally loses faith in his 
 gypsy mistress and his love purged of trust and 
 affection hardens to lust and shows itself in jeal- 
 ous rage in Hamlet and Othello. In Lear the 
 jealousy has bred despair, and the despair shrills 
 to madness and the more awful dread of mad- 
 ness: In Timon the ravings die gradually away in 
 moans and cursings to the inevitable end. 
 
 Each of these tragedies marks a stage In Shake- 
 speare's agony: we can trace his descent to the 
 ultimate of human suffering by the stains of his 
 
 197 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 bleeding feet on the flints and thorns of the 
 rough way. After Timon there is no more to be 
 said. But the rhythm of life is never so symmet- 
 rical-perfect as the rhythm of art. When Shake- 
 speare wrote Lear and Timon, he tasted the very 
 bitterness of despair and death: his dark mis- 
 tress had probably drawn away from him com- 
 pletely in some new Infatuation; but a little later, 
 when he wrote Troilus and Cressida and Antony 
 and Cleopatra, the sky had grown lighter again 
 and the sun shone through the clouds. Antony 
 and Cleopatra is evidence sufficient that his mis- 
 tress had been kind to him; It is the St. Martin's 
 summer, so to speak, of his passion: the warmth 
 and sunshine and ecstasy of joy are In It. 
 
 This Irregular rhythm of life Is more pathetic 
 than the inevitable parabola of art. If Shake- 
 speare had gone steadily down to despair from 
 the sonnets, through Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth 
 to Lear and Timon, we should not have been so 
 moved as by the exquisitely sharp renascence to 
 life and love In Troilus and Cressida which Is fol- 
 lowed by the exultant passion of Antony and 
 Cleopatra, where the flowers bloom again in the 
 sunny warmth, and the love-birds sing before the 
 final desolation. 
 
 These two plays contain Shakespeare's fin- 
 198 
 
Troilus and Cressida: False Cress id 
 
 est portraits of his great mistress. Troilus and 
 Cressida was probably revised as late as 1605-6: 
 I have given my reasons elsewhere for thinking 
 the revision an earlier work than Antony and 
 Cleopatra. With the exception of Timon, 
 Troilus and Cressida is the harshest play Shake- 
 speare ever wrote : it is steeped in contempt for 
 poor humanity. I have found in the poet's life 
 the explanation of this intensified misery. Not 
 only is he suffering almost past hope from the un- 
 faith of his gypsy-wanton, but he has been plagued 
 by the rivalry of the poet Chapman, whom he 
 describes with exquisite insight in the sonnets as 
 something of a pedant. Chapman translated 
 Homer and glorified the Greeks: Shakespeare 
 therefore jeers at the " war for a placket "... 
 " all the argument," he tells us, " is a cuckold and 
 a whore " ; he makes Achilles a cowardly ruffian 
 and " the king of men " a mouthing imbecile; he 
 will not even leave us the ideal picture of Hector 
 and Andromache: Hector challenges Ajax and 
 then withdraws from the fight out of regard for 
 the blood of his " sacred aunt " which flows in 
 Ajax's veins. 
 
 As I have said elsewhere, no one was ever 
 better fitted to appreciate the grace of Greece and 
 the magic of Greek plastic art than Shakespeare; 
 
 199 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 had he possessed Jonson's knowledge of the lan- 
 guage, he would have left us divine pictures of 
 Greek life. But Chapman had made up to Her- 
 bert, and his pedantry and overpraised Homer 
 had got upon Shakespeare's nerves, who now 
 spewed out his contempt of his rival's classical 
 learning in Timon and in Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 It may be possible to get nearer to Shake- 
 speare's life than this while showing how his per- 
 sonal experiences affected even his mature art. 
 We know a good deal about the bitter quarrel 
 between Ben Jonson on the one side and Dekker 
 and Marston on the other; It seems probable that 
 Shakespeare when creating Ajax made the char- 
 acter life-like and recognizable by lending the 
 stout Grecian some of Ben Jonson's peculiarities; 
 and perhaps " rank " Thersltes shows Shake- 
 speare's judgment of Dekker. 
 
 Here Is the portrait of Ajax put In the mouth 
 of Alexander: 
 
 " This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of 
 their particular additions; he Is as valiant as the 
 lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant: 
 a man Into whom nature hath so crowded hu- 
 mours that his valour Is crushed into folly, his 
 folly sauced with discretion : there Is no man hath 
 a virtue that he hath not a glimpse of, nor any 
 
 200 
 
Troilus and Cress ida: False Cressid 
 
 man an attaint but he carries some strain of it; 
 he is melancholy without cause, and merry against 
 the hair: he hath the joints of everything, but 
 everything so out of joint that he is gouty Bria- 
 reus, many hands and no use; or purblind Argus, 
 all eyes and no sight. . . ." 
 
 This is too precise portraiture for an histori- 
 cal figure; it is evident that Shakespeare had some 
 contemporary in mind when he thus individual- 
 ized Ajax. I cannot but think he was glancing 
 at Ben Jonson, his constant and not always fair 
 critic, In this astonishingly realistic description. 
 That " gouty Briareus " is poisonously clever and 
 the " purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight '* flicks 
 the raw spot with consummate skill. It looks to 
 me as if Shakespeare were paying off old scores 
 in thus ridiculing his critics; his caricature of 
 Jonson is on the whole good-humoured and ex- 
 tremely effective, whereas his opinion of Dekker, 
 who was supposed to be his partisan. Is sharpened 
 by contemptuous aversion. Nothing gives a better 
 idea of Shakespeare's extraordinary insight than 
 these disdainful glances at his contemporaries. 
 They had not made life very pleasant to him, as 
 we know; he retorts by shelving the clumsiness 
 and ineptitude which disfigured Jonson's strength 
 and the foulness which prevented the gutter-mind 
 
 201 
 
The Womeji oj Shakespeare 
 
 of Dekker from rendering a fair reflection of 
 earth and sky. But even here while giving play 
 to keen eyes, he judges with Imperial fairness: 
 his friends fare worse at his hands than his 
 opponents. 
 
 The main current of the poet's bitterness in 
 TroUus and Cressida as In all his other tragedies 
 flows from his disappointed and defiled love. At 
 length he has found his opportunity: ten years 
 have passed since he first sketched his proud witty 
 wanton mistress for us as Rosaline in Lovers 
 Lahour^s Lost; now he will give us another real- 
 istic portrait of her; but this time he will not 
 merely tell us she's '' a light girl " with black 
 eyes, he'll show her in act; she shall live for us 
 and play the old game before our eyes. By this 
 time Shakespeare had come to realize, I Imagine, 
 that his passion was extraordinary and note- 
 worthyand of purpose and with self-conscious art 
 he set to work to paint It. 
 
 The physical traits which identify Cressida 
 with Rosaline and the *' dark lady " of the son- 
 nets are at first slight; mere indications in fact; 
 and only to be thus construed because they are 
 / wholly unnecessary In the play. 
 
 The tragedy opens with the dialogue between 
 Troilus and Cresslda's uncle Pandar. Troilus 
 
 202 
 
Troilus and Cress id a: False Cress i J 
 
 begins by talking In Shakespeare's very strain of 
 the " cruel war* here within" himself: he goes 
 on: 
 
 ... I am weaker than a woman's tear. 
 Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance. . . . 
 
 In just the same strain Hamlet lamented his 
 tameness; he lacked "gall to make oppression 
 bitter"; but this "fonder than ignorance" is 
 Shakespeare's later confession. 
 
 Pandar praises Cressida's beauty: "An her 
 hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's — 
 well, go to — there were no more comparison be- 
 tween the women ... I would not . . . praise 
 her . . . but I would somebody had heard her 
 talk yesterday, as I did. I will not dispraise 
 your sister Cassandra's wit, but . . ." 
 
 A little later he babbles again: 
 
 I care not an she were a black-a-moor ; 'tis all one to me. 
 
 The identity is unmistakable; Cressida is a/ 
 dark beauty with astonishing wit; every touch i^ 
 of Shakespeare's cunning mistress Rosallne-FIt- 
 ton: Troilus cries like Romeo: 
 
 She is stubborn-chaste against all suit. 
 
 * In Julius Ca'sar, Bnitus, another incarnation of vShake- 
 speare, talked of being "with himself at war." 
 
 203 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Then Crcssida is introduced to talk about Troi- 
 lus : while Pandar praises him she runs him down, 
 till Pandar gets annoyed: 
 
 One knows not at what ward you lie. 
 
 At once this stubborn-chaste Cressida replies: 
 "Upon my back to defend my belly; upon my 
 wit to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy to de- 
 fend mine honesty " and so on, more and more 
 lewdly. When Pandar is going away she calls 
 him " a bawd," and this is how this virgin talks 
 to herself: 
 
 But more in Troilus thousand-fold I see 
 Than in the glass of Pandar's praise may be; 
 Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing: 
 Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing. 
 That she beloved knows nought that knows not this : 
 Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is: 
 That she was never yet that ever knew 
 Love got so sweet as when desire did sue. . . . 
 
 This Is manifestly the same woman whom Ber- 
 tram described to us in AWs Well with her pre- 
 tended " restraint," " infinite cunning," and self- 
 abandonment, and whom Antony is about to de- 
 scribe as " cunning past men's thought " : this Is 
 the " whitely wanton," Rosaline, who loved to 
 fence with words — the lewder the better. No 
 virgin ever had this science of Cressida. 
 
 204 
 
Troilus and Cress id a: False Cressid 
 
 We do not see Cressida again till Pandar In 
 the third act brings her to Troilus in the orchard: 
 Shakespeare has painted the love-scene for us 
 more lusciously than love-scene was ever painted 
 before or since. 
 
 What a fascination his mistress must have had 
 for him to enable him after years of Intimacy to 
 realize this recrudescence of passion with such 
 throbbing Intensity! His mouthpiece, Troilus, 
 cries : 
 
 I am giddy; expectation whirls me round. 
 
 The imaginary relish is so sweet 
 
 That it enchants my sense: what will it be. 
 
 When that the watery palate tastes indeed 
 
 Love's thrice repured nectar? death, I fear me, 
 
 Swouvding destruction, or some joy too fine. 
 
 Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness 
 
 For the capacity of my ruder powers: 
 
 I fear it much;* and I do fear besides, 
 
 That I shall lose distinction in my joys; 
 
 As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps 
 
 The enemy flying. 
 
 * The italics are mine. This is the supremest utterance of 
 passion in all Shakespeare, This fear that the intensity of the 
 emotion will lame the " ruder powers " of the body can only 
 be felt in a man's love for a woman. In her love for Bassanio 
 Portia fears the "too much" of the emotion, but naturally 
 without any reference to the body. In Sonnet 23, which I 
 have already described as the only cry of passion addressed 
 to the youth in any writing of Shakespeare, we are confronted 
 with the same overpowering desire and the same dread: now 
 what should we infer from this? Only one deduction, it seems 
 
 205 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Pandar, too, describes Cressida In much the 
 same way: 
 
 She's making her recady, she'll come straight: 
 
 . . . She does so blush. ... It is the prettiest 
 
 villain: she fetches her breath as short as a 
 
 new ta'en sparrow. 
 Tro. Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom: 
 
 My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse. . . . 
 
 The lovers' talk at first is nothing wonderful 
 — ^all hesitation on her part and admiration on 
 his. But Cressida Is the first to end the fencing. 
 I must transcribe a page. Shakespeare has writ- 
 ten nothing finer, nothing truer: 
 
 Cres. Boldness comes to me now^ and brings me heart. 
 Prince Troilus^ I have loved you night and day 
 For many weary months. 
 Tro. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win.-* 
 Cres. Hard to seem won: but I was won^ my lord. 
 With the first glance that ever — pardon me — 
 If I confess much^, you will play the tyrant. 
 I love you now; but not till now^ so much 
 But I might master it: in faith I lie; 
 
 to me, is possible. This nervous fear lest the verj force of 
 desire should mar the performance is manifestly borrowed 
 from Shakespeare's desire for his mistress; it is utterly af- 
 fected and insincere when addressed to the youth. Just in the 
 same way Shakespeare pictures Venus begging Adonis again 
 and again not to let his beauty die without leaving children to 
 inherit it, and then addresses the same prayer to his man- 
 friend in the first eighteen sonnets, where from a man to a 
 man the prayer is wholly out of place and insincere. 
 
 206 
 
Troilus and Cressida: False Cressid 
 
 My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown 
 Too headstrong for their mother. See we fools! 
 Why have I blabb'd? who shall be true to us. 
 When we are so unsecret to ourselves? 
 But, though I loved you well, I woo'd you not: 
 And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man. 
 Or that we women had men's privilege 
 Of speaking first. . . . 
 
 Then she will go away: 
 
 ... I know not what I speak. 
 Tro. Well know they what they speak that speak so 
 
 wisely. 
 Cres. Perchance my lord, I show more craft* than love: 
 And fell so roundly to a large confession. 
 To angle for your thoughts: but you are wise, 
 Or else you love not, for to be wise and love 
 Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods 
 above. . . . 
 
 The last two lines are plainly Shakespeare's 
 own reflection. Troilus answers Cressida in a 
 way which shows the disillusion of all Shake- 
 speare's desperate hopes; for why should young 
 Troilus not believe his love? The whole passage 
 is an intimate confession, and in the last two lines 
 Shakespeare again laments that his simple con- 
 
 * This reminds me of Juliet's declaration, and serves to show 
 [ how far Shakespeare has travelled in knowledge of his mis- 
 j tress in the ten or twelve years: 
 
 But trust me, gentlemen, I'll prove more true 
 Than those that have more cunning to be strange. 
 207 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 stancy is at a disadvantage with his mistress's 
 opalescent changes of fancy: 
 
 that I thought it could be in a woman — 
 As, if it can, I will presume in you — 
 
 To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; 
 To keep her constancy in plight and youth. 
 Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind 
 That doth renew swifter than blood decays ! 
 Or that persuasion could but thus convince me. 
 That my integrity and truth to you 
 Might be affronted with the match and weight 
 Of such a winnow'd purity in love; 
 How were I then uplifted! but, alas! 
 
 1 am as true as truth's simplicity 
 
 And simpler than the infancy of truth. . . . 
 
 The next morning Cressida is as charming- 
 frank as Juliet: '^ . Night hath been too brief," 
 she says, and Troilus, like Romeo, wishes that 
 " the busy day had not been wakened by the lark." 
 
 A few minutes afterwards when Cressida is 
 told that she will have to leave Troilus she swears 
 that she will " not go from Troy " ; she will not 
 even hear of moderation in her grief. 
 
 The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste. 
 
 And violenteth in a sense as strong 
 
 As that which causeth it: how can I moderate it? 
 
 She will be a " woful Cressid 'mongst the 
 merry Greeks." And then this Troilus though 
 only a youth speaks again with the insight of dis- 
 
 208 
 
Trotlus and Cressida: False Cressid 
 
 illusloned Shakespeare: he doubts Crcssida's 
 truth and his own merit. The whole passage de- 
 serves to be weighed word by word though space 
 forbids me to transcribe more than a part of it: 
 he says to his mistress : 
 
 ... I do not call your faith in question 
 So mainly as my merit: I cannot sing, 
 Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk 
 Nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all. 
 To which the Grecians are most prompt and preg- 
 nant: 
 But I can tell that in each grace of these 
 There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil 
 That tempts most cunningly: but be not tempted. 
 
 Cres. Do you think I will? 
 
 Tro. No. 
 
 But something may he done that we will not. 
 
 I have put this last line in italics and shall return 
 to It again. 
 
 Then we have the terrible scene in the fifth act 
 in which Cressida angles for Diomedes, just as 
 she aforetime angled for Troilus. Ulysses and 
 Troilus witness the whole scene. She begins with 
 a beseeching which in itself is a confession: 
 
 Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly. 
 
 She then pretends coyness, and Diomedes bids 
 her good night, " I'll be your fool no more." 
 Troilus-Shakespeare's comment is astonishing: 
 Thy better must. 
 209 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 Then she strokes Diomedes' cheek and he asks a 
 token from her for surety. She gives him the 
 very sleeve which Troilus had given her. When 
 they say " good night " she reminds Diomedes of 
 his promise with " I prithee, come," and talks to 
 herself in this way: 
 
 Troilus^ farewell! one eye yet looks on thee; 
 But with my heart the other eye doth see. 
 Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find. 
 The error of our eye directs our mind: . . . 
 
 The first two lines though weak are important 
 to us: the two last of course are Shakespeare's 
 comment. 
 
 After this it is no wonder that Ulysses wants to 
 
 go: 
 
 Why stay we then.^ 
 
 Troilus-Shakespeare answers : 
 
 To make a recordation to my soul 
 
 Of every syllable that here was spoke. . . . 
 
 There is a famous sonnet in which Shakespeare 
 warns his dark mistress not to be faithless before 
 his very eyes, for that may push him to madness 
 and revenge. I have often wondered what she 
 said or did to Herbert before Shakespeare's eyes 
 to have wrung that wild threat from her gentle 
 poet-lover. And when I read this scene in Troi- 
 
 210 
 
Troilus and Cress ida: False Cress id 
 
 Ills and Cressida I feel that Shakespeare had 
 either seen his mistress betray him or listened to 
 her while she was giving herself. Those words 
 of TroUus ring In my brain : 
 
 To make a recordation to my soul 
 
 Of every syllable that here was spoke. 
 
 We have seen long ago that it was a trick, of 
 Shakespeare when Intensely moved to coin a new 
 word or word-form; his exquisite sensibility al- 
 ways Invented a new symbol. The word " recor- 
 dation " Is a confession to me. 
 
 There Is no reason given for Cresslda's un- 
 faithfulness. She was as loose as a wanton boy; 
 folly tempted her: Greek and Trojan alike were 
 honey to her and all hours of day and night ap- 
 propriate. 
 
 At first sight of her Ulysses, who is the wisdom 
 of the play, condemns her, as Shakespeare got 
 the Abbess in The Comedy of Errors to condemn 
 his jealous wife Adriana. I hear Shakespeare's 
 severe ethical judgment of his mistress in every 
 
 word: 
 
 . . . Fie, fie upon her! 
 There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip. 
 Nay her foot speaks; her wanton spirit looks out 
 At every joint and motive of her body. 
 O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue. 
 That give accosting welcome ere it comes, 
 211 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts 
 To every ticklish reader ! set them down 
 For sluttish spoils of opportunity 
 And daughters of the game. . . . 
 
 And yet though her falseness Is seen so clearly 
 and cursed so bitterly, she is not punished in any 
 way. 
 
 Before I leave this drama I must go back one 
 moment to the warning of Troilus, which I 
 marked In Italics. Troilus tells Cresslda " some- 
 thing may be done that we will not " : the Gre- 
 cians, he says, can " play at subtle games." Now 
 what are these " subtle games " of love that 
 "tempt most cunningly"? We noticed just the 
 same Insinuation in the words of Parolles about 
 Bertram-Herbert In AlVs Well. In Act v. 3, Pa- 
 rolles says that he knew of a promise of marriage 
 by Bertram and things which would derive me 
 ill-will to speak of; Herbert then had done even 
 worse than promise marriage. Shakespeare 
 wants to leave us with the impression that his 
 mistress was so given to the pleasures of sense 
 that the most subtle and cunning sensualist among 
 her lovers would have the greatest Influence over 
 her. He wishes to suggest that Mary FItton 
 preferred Herbert and others to himself because 
 they practised " subtle " games of love which he 
 
 212 
 
Troilus and Cress id a: False Cress id 
 
 would not condescend to use. The accusation 
 was probably true, though I doubt the implied su- 
 periority. 
 
 Shakespeare then allows Cressida to assure us 
 that she has always one eye on Troilus-Shake- 
 speare, even when the other is on Diomedes or 
 her newest fancy. That is the truth I imagine. 
 Her love of Shakespeare is the single redeeming 
 trait in Cressida-Fitton; otherwise she is as loose 
 as she was ten years before in 1597 when we first 
 met her as Rosaline in Lovers Labour's Lost. 
 
 There is no picture in all literature of so de- 
 lightful and frank a wanton as Shakespeare's 
 Cressida; she is almost too soulless "a daugh- 
 ter of the game " * to be human — " the sluttish 
 sport of opportunity." But there must have been 
 something more in Shakespeare's gypsy mistress 
 than wiles and wantonness. We know from the 
 sonnets that there was might and boldness of per- 
 sonality in her; but was there nothing else? We 
 shall soon see. 
 
 * Shakespeare really made this English language of ours 
 just as Dante made Italian and Luther German: the phrase 
 of the prostitute to-daj on the streets of London is: "I'm on 
 the game." 
 
 91S 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA: CLEOPATRA-FITTON : 
 
 " WITCHERY JOINS WITH BEAUTY, LUST 
 
 WITH BOTH ! " 
 
 J N TONY AND CLEOPATRA is 
 -^^ Shakespeare's masterpiece of passion; in 
 it he gives us the greatest woman-portrait ever 
 painted; here at length we shall see his wanton 
 mistress at her best queening it imperially. 
 
 The whole interest of this long play is concen- 
 trated on Antony and on Cleopatra. Antony Is 
 talked of by the professors as " a supreme poeti- 
 cal creation ... as unique as Hamlet," and we 
 may assume before proof that Shakespeare will 
 Identify himself with the lover, Antony; but a lit- 
 tle doubt of the perfectness of the portraiture 
 must remain In us; for Antony was a great cap- 
 tain and fighter. Even In Plutarch his qualities 
 as a man of action are only obscured by his pas- 
 sion for Cleopatra; she *' quenched the goodness 
 . . . and the hope of rising In him . . . and 
 stirred up many vices "; but first and last he was 
 
 214 
 
Cleopatra-F itton 
 
 a great soldier. Gentle sensitive Shakespeare 
 we may be sure, with his Hamlet-like poetic na- 
 ture, will depict the lover for us to the life; but 
 how will he render the captain? 
 
 Plutarch has not given him much help : he, too, 
 has taken the leader of men for granted, and 
 Shakespeare finds no magic In himself to better 
 his model. In this drama Antony lives for us 
 as a lover, a generous, forgiving poet-lover, 
 but nothing more. Antony and Cleopatra Is 
 even more of a lyric, a lust-lyric it Is true, than 
 Romeo and Juliet. The character of Antony is 
 only obscured for us by the soldierly achievements 
 which Shakespeare following Plutarch attributes 
 to him. " The triple pillar of the world " has 
 no kinship for Shakespeare, no attraction even till 
 he is " transform'd into a strumpet's fool." 
 Hamlet-Shakespeare is here in a role only par- 
 tially suited to him and consequently Antony Is 
 not one of Shakespeare's best character pictures. 
 
 But under the thin armour, so to speak, of the 
 Roman general, Shakespeare paints himself for 
 us to the life. This Antony-Shakespeare can be 
 distinguished easily In alm^ost every scene. Now 
 and then Indeed certain qualities of Shakespeare 
 come to more superb and perfect expression in 
 Antony than in any other of the dramatist's he- 
 
 215 
 
c^ 
 
 T^ he Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 rocs, for Shakespeare's skill of hand increased to 
 the end. 
 
 I have called Shakespeare the ideal lover with 
 the best tongue in the world. Listen to him in 
 the first scene of the first act: 
 
 Cleo. If it be love indeed, tell me how much. 
 Ant. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd. 
 Cleg. I'll set a bourn how far to be beloved. 
 Ant. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new 
 earth. 
 
 - The great w4 ttgs-of th« poet's passion beat in 
 the superb phrase. In the very first act Antony 
 sees with Shakespeare's clearness of vision that 
 he must break these "strong Egyptian fetters'' 
 or " lose himself in dotage "; but he is not strong 
 enough to carry his insight to act. Shakespeare 
 marks in Antony his own understanding that all 
 remorse is pernicious: 
 
 Things that are past are done with me. 
 
 Antony, too, gives explicit and reiterated ex- 
 pression to that love of truth, at all costs, which 
 was the sign at once and -pek-star of Shake- 
 speare's intelligence : 
 
 Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death, 
 I hear him as he flatter'd. . . . 
 216 
 
CUopatra-F itton 
 Again this Shakespeare-Antony cries: 
 
 Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue; 
 
 Name Cleopatra as she is call'd in Romej 
 
 Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase, and taunt my faults 
 
 With such full license as both truth and malice 
 
 Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds, 
 
 When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us 
 
 Is as our earing . . 
 
 To hear of our faults, Shakespeare says, is as 
 the ploughing and fecundating of the mind: at 
 forty-four he was still young In spirit. 
 
 The dignity, too, with which Antony confesses 
 his fault to Caesar and himself pronounces abso- 
 lution. Is finely characteristic of Shakespeare's In- 
 tellectual pride. 
 
 Cleopatra's belief, however, that Antony was 
 '' the greatest soldier of the world " does not con- 
 vince us; nor Pompey's statement that his " sol- 
 diership Is twice the other twain . . ." We are 
 rather Inclined to credit Shakespeare himself 
 when he tells us through Caesar that Shakespeare- 
 Antony Is child-like In maturity and will " pawn 
 his experience to present pleasure." That Is the 
 judgment of the Intellect on the artist-lover. 
 
 When his insensate passion has brought him to 
 ruin this Antony-Shakespeare naturally reaches 
 supreme utterance. As soon as he Is defeated 
 the old phrase rises to his lips: 
 
 217 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 I am so lated in the world, that I 
 Have lost my way for ever: . . . 
 
 It might be Richard II speaking or Hamlet, 
 or any other of Shakespeare's incarnations; and 
 this Antony has a ship laden with gold to bestow 
 upon his friends. 
 
 When Cleopatra comes to beg forgiveness for 
 betraying him, he must put his fault on her; but 
 when Enobarbus — who is the intellectual con- 
 science, so to speak, of the play — is asked who Is 
 in fault, he tells the simple truth: 
 
 Antony only, that would make his will 
 Lord of his reason . . . 
 
 In spite of this condemnation, Shakespeare 
 having Mary Fitton in mind persists in making 
 Antony blame Cleopatra, though this feminine 
 railing is an unnecessary weakness in Antony. 
 
 . . . whither hast thou led me, Egypt? 
 
 he cries, and again In words that are from Shake- 
 speare's very soul: 
 
 . . . Egypt, thou knew'st too well 
 My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings. 
 And thou shouldst tow me after: o'er my spirit 
 Thy full supremacy thou knew'st, and that 
 Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods 
 Command me. 
 
 218 
 
Cleopatra-F itton 
 
 His gypsy queen begs again for pardon, and 
 he gives it in a quick change of mood most gen- 
 erously : 
 
 Fall not a tear, I say : one of them rates 
 All that is won and lost: give me a kiss; 
 Even this repays me. . . . 
 
 . . . Fortmie knows 
 We scorn her most when most she offers blows 
 
 But when a little later he finds her allowing 
 Caesar's messenger, Thyreus, to kiss her hand he 
 rages against her, as we have seen Shakespeare 
 raging again and again in half a dozen different 
 tragedies against Mary Fitton; though here prob- 
 ably his reproaches are bolder than he ever dared 
 use to his great mistress's face: 
 
 You have been a boggier ever: 
 But when we in our viciousness grow hard — 
 O misery on't! — the wise gods seel our eyes; 
 In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make 
 
 us 
 Adore our errors ; laugh at's, while we strut 
 To our confusion. 
 
 Cleg. O, is't come to this.^* 
 
 Ant. I found you as a morsel cold upon 
 
 Dead Csesar's trencher; nay, you were a fragment 
 Of Cneius Pompey's; besides what hotter hours, 
 Unregister'd in vulgar fame, you have 
 Luxuriously pick'd out: for I am sure. 
 Though you can guess what temperance should 
 
 be 
 You know not what it is. . . . 
 
 219 
 
 >.., 
 
Thf Women of Shakespeare 
 
 O, that I were 
 Upon the hill of Basan, to outroar 
 The horned herd! for I have savage cause. 
 
 This is the truth about Mary Fitton at last: 
 she did not know what temperance was in her 
 love of luxurious hot hours. But all this raving 
 insane jealousy with its " savage cause " is only 
 the obverse of the man's intense desire. He soon 
 forgives her; calls her ** my heart " and cries: 
 
 . . . Come 
 Let's have one other gaudy nignt: . . , 
 
 This Antony-Shakespeare who has lost every- 
 thing including honour yet in his abandonment 
 finds treasure in the richness of his soul. When 
 he hears that Enobarbus has left him, he sends 
 his money after him with nobly generous Shake- 
 speare words: 
 
 Go, Eros, send his treasure after; do it; 
 Detain no jot, I charge thee: write to him — 
 I will subscribe — gentle adieux and greetings; 
 Say that I wish he never find more cause 
 To change a master. O, my fortunes have 
 Corrupted honest men! . . 
 
 Surely this is the gentlest, wisest soul that ever 
 revealed its sweetness in literature. 
 
 220 
 
 I 
 
Cleopatra-F itton 
 
 Betrayed again by Cleopatra, Antony finds su- 
 preme expression for his love and for his con- 
 tempt : 
 
 . . . Betray'd I am: 
 O, this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm 
 Whose eye beck'd forth my wars, and call'd them home; 
 Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end — 
 Like a right gipsy, hath at fast and loose, 
 Beguiled me to the very heart of loss . . . 
 
 As soon as Antony, the lover, hears that Cleo- 
 patra is dead he closes the sweet-scented book of 
 life and follows eagerly: 
 
 Unarm, Eros: the long day's task is done. 
 And we must sleep . . . 
 
 His passion for his gypsy-wanton holds to the 
 end: 
 
 I here importune death awhile, until 
 Of many thousand kisses the poor last 
 I lay upon thy lips. 
 
 I have given a little more space to Antony's 
 character than becomes the purpose of these ar- 
 ticles because Shakespeare never revealed the in- 
 tense desire that burned in him throughout his 
 whole mature life so completely as in this Antony. 
 But the Roman general's armour does not suit 
 
 221 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Shakespeare, and so Antony's very last words, 
 though true enough to the Roman, are not true 
 to the poet : 
 
 I lived the greatest prince o' the world 
 The noblest, and do now not basely die, 
 Not cowardly put off my helmet to 
 My countryman, a Roman by a Roman 
 Valiantly vanquished. Now my spirit is going; 
 I can no more. 
 
 Shakespeare himself Is not satisfied with this 
 summing up : he puts the true word for himself 
 as the supreme creative artist in the mouth of 
 Caesar's friend Agrippa: 
 
 ... A rarer spirit never 
 Did steer humanity: but you, gods, will give us 
 Some faults to make us men. . . . 
 
 But If Shakespeare Is not perfectly at home in 
 the stiff armour of the Roman general, If his pas- 
 sion is too poetic, his generosities and nobilities 
 too unlimited and too lavish; his superb mistress, 
 Mary Fitton finds at length in Cleopatra a part 
 that suits her to perfection. All great craftsmen 
 are helped now and then by chance or by the hap 
 of lucky hours to some masterpiece beyond their 
 imagining. More than any other artist, partly 
 by reason of his ever-welling sympathy, partly be- 
 
 222 
 
Cleopatra-Fitton 
 
 cause of his tireless industry, Shakespeare was 
 blessed with these favours of fitful fortune. We 
 have seen in Romeo and Juliet how his weak- 
 nesses were complemented by the realistic fea- 
 tures supplied to him by his forerunner Brooke 
 in the portrait of the garrulous venal old Nurse; 
 so here his desire to strip and flay his mistress 
 as he did in Cressida is complemented by the fact 
 that Cleopatra did at length rise to unselfish 
 greatness, and take her own life. She may have 
 killed herself out of pride to avoid being dragged 
 as a show in Caesar's triumph or out of love for 
 Antony, or both motives may have swayed her; 
 but she did commit self-murder and that redeems 
 her for us, lends her that soul of greatness if not 
 of goodness which makes us forgive the wanton 
 blood because of the immortal longings which 
 lifted her to tragic heights. 
 
 I have analyzed Cleopatra's character carefully 
 and fully in my book The Man Shakespeare; yet 
 the character-painting is so rich that I am de- 
 lighted to show the extraordinary picture again 
 in a new and perhaps a more favourable light. 
 
 Two groups of qualities in Mary Fitton seem 
 to have struck Shakespeare almost from the 
 beginning; her cunning pretence of coldness gild- 
 ing utter wantonness, and her dominant person- 
 
 22S 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 allty armed with quick wit and quicker temper. 
 While giving all these peculiar qualities to her in 
 all his better portraits he usually lays stress upon 
 the one set rather than the other. For instance, 
 in Rosaline in Lovers Labour's Lost he brings 
 out her cool aloofness and wantonness and wit: 
 in Cressida we have a more intense Rosaline: her 
 faithlessness is shown to us in act; she confesses 
 that her coldness Is only a pretence used to 
 quicken the desires of her lover. On the other 
 hand, in the " dark lady " of the sonnets Shake- 
 speare has emphasized the domineering strength 
 of his mistress's personality; vices in her become 
 beauties, he tells us; and In Cleopatra this 
 strength of personality is insisted upon again and 
 complicated with cajoleries and quick wit and hot 
 temper. This magic of personality and high- 
 spirited witty boldness were clearly the qualities 
 Shakespeare most admired in his mistress, just as 
 the cunning wiles and wantonness were the " foul 
 faults " he raves against In both sonnets and 
 plays. When he wrote Troilus and Cressida, 
 there had been a rebirth of passion between them 
 and probably a nev/ betrayal. Before he wrote 
 Antony and Cleopatra he had enjoyed an Indian 
 summer of delight. For one peculiarity of 
 Shakespeare seems to be that working as he did 
 
 224 
 
Cleopatra-Fitton 
 
 with extraordinary constancy his experiences of 
 every year or even of every month tinged and col- 
 oured his art. His plays and poems thus become 
 documents of a singular and Intimate self-reveal- 
 ing — windows, so to speak, through which we can 
 follow his soul's adventures. 
 
 The very first scene of Antony and Cleopatra 
 shows that Shakespeare's love Is happy and In full 
 flood. As his continual disappointments have em- 
 bittered him he needs happiness In order to give 
 us at all a fair picture of his mistress; even at his 
 best now he Is likely to err by making the shadows 
 too heavy. The joy In the play then Is a good 
 omen. At the very beginning Cleopatra teases 
 Antony jealously; messengers from Rome are 
 announced, and she cries, " Fulvla perchance Is 
 angry," or " Young Caesar may have sent his 
 * powerful mandate ' to you." Antony will not 
 listen but strikes the key-note which we hear 
 again at the end of the drama; he and his love 
 are a pair without peer in the world; of that at 
 least Shakespeare was certain. 
 
 " Stirr'd by Cleopatra " with jibes and jealousy 
 Antony will give himself to " love of Love and 
 her soft hours." 
 
 But Cleopatra taunts him: 
 
 Hear the ambassadors. 
 225 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 He replies : 
 
 . . . Fie, wrangling queen! 
 Whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh. 
 To weep, whose every passion fully strives 
 To make itself, in thee, fair and admired ! 
 
 Shakespeare used precisely the same words to his 
 " dark lady " of the sonnets, in Sonnet 150: 
 
 Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill 
 That in the very refuse of thy deeds 
 There is such strength and warranties of skill 
 That in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? . . . 
 
 As if to impress the strange fact upon us Eno- 
 barbus 'sings of Cleopatra to the same tune ; 
 
 . . . vilest things 
 Become themselves in her. . . . 
 
 Her jealousy is then wonderfully rendered again: 
 Fulvia's death is announced, and Antony is re- 
 solved as Shakespeare no doubt resolved a thou- 
 sand times: 
 
 f I must from this enchanting queen break off: 
 I Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know. 
 My idleness doth hatch. . . . 
 
 But Enobarbus tells him that : 
 
 Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, 
 
 dies instantly: 
 I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer 
 moment. . . . 
 Ant. She is cunning past man's thought. 
 
 226 
 
Cleopatra-Fitton 
 
 Enobarbus will not have it. He sees more 
 clearly: I call him the conscience of the play, the 
 embodiment of Shakespeare's judgment. He 
 says: 
 
 Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing 
 but the finest part of pure love: . . . 
 Ant. Would I had never seen her! . . . 
 
 But Shakespeare's impartial intellect will not 
 accept that lame and Ill-tempered conclusion. 
 Enobarbus replies : 
 
 O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of 
 work; which not to have been blest withal would have 
 discredited your travel. 
 
 Cleopatra paints herself again for us to the 
 life in the next scene: her thought is all of An- 
 tony: 
 
 Cleo. Where is he? 
 
 Char. I did not see him since. 
 
 Cleo. See where he is, who's with him, what he does: 
 I did not send you: if you find him sad. 
 Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report 
 That I am sudden sick: quick and return. 
 
 She is a feather tossed on the wind of passion. 
 She teases, jibes, and is jealous — all from intense 
 love. When she sees that Antony Intends to 
 leave her, she changes at once to tender flattery 
 
 227 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 and good wishes; for she Is Intent on winning him 
 back again: 
 
 And all the gods go with you! upon your sword 
 Sit laurel victory! . . . 
 
 Even when Antony Is absent her thoughts are 
 all of him. The scene with the eunuch, Mardian, 
 is a masterpiece Incomparable — a perfect cameo. 
 
 She goes on to quarrel with Charmian for com- 
 paring Caesar with Antony, her " man of men." 
 She only loved Caesar in : 
 
 My salad days. 
 When I was green in judgment: cold in blood . . . 
 
 She feeds herself with thoughts of Antony, as 
 *' with most delicious poison." 
 In her: 
 
 . . . witchcraft joins with beauty, lust with both! . . . 
 
 In this first act Cleopatra is already painted to 
 the life with such ease, mastery, and consummate 
 hrtOy as no other dramatist or even novelist has 
 ever displayed. Shakespeare had been in love 
 with Mary Fitton for years. She had got into 
 his blood, and he could not but paint her for us 
 in act after act, in a dozen differing moods. 
 
 Even Shakespeare's Intellectual conscience Eno- 
 
 barbus cannot control himself when he speaks of 
 
 her: 
 
 228 
 
Cleopatra-Fitton 
 
 I saw her once 
 Hop forty paces through the public street; 
 And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted 
 That she did make defect perfection 
 And, breathless, power breathe forth. 
 
 This incident seems to me a veritable perform- 
 ance of Mary Fitton reported by Shakespeare. 
 It must have made a deathless impression on him. 
 Not only does it throw Enobarbus off his perfect 
 balance; but it is in itself too peculiar to be im- 
 agined and is besides not at all in keeping with the 
 character of the sensual queen. It reminds us- 
 too directly of the bold sonnet-heroine. That in- 
 sistence upon " power " strikes the same note as 
 in Sonnet 150: 
 
 O from what power hast thou this powerful might . . . ? 
 
 In the fifth scene of the second act Cleopatra 
 is painted for us again to the finger-tips. She be- 
 gins by asking for music : 
 
 . . . moody food. 
 Of us that trade in love. . . . 
 
 Then come memories of Antony: 
 
 I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night 
 I laugh'd him into patience; and next morn 
 Ere the ninth hour, I drank him to his bed; 
 Then put my tires and mantle on him, whilst 
 I wore his sword Philippan. . . . 
 
 229 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 That any woman could drink Antony to bed 
 would astonish us, but Shakespeare we know had 
 " very poor and unhappy brains for drinking." 
 Still the dressing up of Antony, while soft Cleo- 
 patra struts about with a sword, realizes the 
 whole scene for us to admiration. 
 
 A messenger comes from Italy, and she cries 
 with astounding sensuality: 
 
 Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in my ears. 
 That long time hath been barren. 
 
 If good news there is gold for him: 
 
 . . . and here 
 My bluest veins to kiss . . . 
 
 — the woman-temptress to perfection. 
 
 She is anxious ; has a mind to strike him ere he 
 speaks. When she hears that Antony is married, 
 she is lost in anger: she strikes the messenger 
 and hales him up and down the room by the hair; 
 will kill him : then the revulsion of the high-bred 
 woman : 
 
 These hands do lack nobility, that they strike 
 A meaner than myself. . . . 
 
 She must know '' the feature of Octavia . . . 
 her years . . . her inclination . . . the colour 
 
Cleopatra-Fitton 
 
 of her hair " and in especial " how tall she is." 
 
 Was there ever such portrait-painting I Every 
 
 touch in place and finished like a miniature. The 
 
 image is so precise that Shakespeare's mistress 
 
 moves across the canvas before our eyes. 
 
 The important feature is repeated. In the 
 
 next scene, an act later, Cleopatra is introduced 
 
 with the messenger again, and the first question 
 
 is: 
 
 Cleo. Is she as tall as me? 
 Mes. She is not^ madam; 
 
 but the messenger says " she is low-voiced." 
 Cleopatra admits " that's not so good," but im- 
 mediately turns the man's praise to blame. To 
 her Octavia is " dull of tongue and dwarfish." 
 When she hears that her rival's face is " round 
 even to faultiness," she decides that 
 
 For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so. 
 Ker hair what colour? 
 Mes. Brown, madam; and her forehead 
 As low as she would wish it. 
 
 At once she gives him gold, finds him most fit for 
 business. 
 
 Here, as in another far earlier portrait, we 
 learn that Mary Fitton's forehead was high and 
 her face rather oval than round. 
 
 til 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Then comes the catastrophe. Enobarbus will 
 have Antony fight on land, but Cleopatra wants 
 him to fight on sea: 
 
 I have sixty sails, Caesar none better. 
 
 In the fight she flies; he follows and 
 
 The greater cantle of the world is lost. 
 
 Of course she begs pardon of Antony and gets it. 
 Then comes the scene in which she gives her 
 hand to Thyreus, Cassar^s messenger, to kiss : tell 
 Cassar, she says, 
 
 ... I am prompt. 
 To lay my crown at's feet, and there to kneel . . . 
 
 This quick change, as I have said elsewhere, is 
 out of tune with the play and unnecessary. It is 
 true to Cressida, no doubt; true to Shakespeare's 
 mistress, probably, but not true to Cleopatra. 
 Cleopatra does not trust herself to Cassar, but to 
 death. It is unnecessary too, because Shakespeare 
 is going to reveal all her worst to us in the scene 
 with her treasurer who proves that she has con- 
 cealed the greater part of her wealth. The 
 shadows are already dark enough. 
 
 It is, as I have said, the historical fact that 
 Cleopatra kills herself, which forces Shakespeare 
 
 232 
 
Cleopatra-F itton 
 
 to do justice to his splendid mistress. Antony 
 may curse her as a " triple-turn'd whore/' who 
 
 ... at fast and loose. 
 Beguiled me to the very heart of loss. 
 
 But it Is not true. Cleopatra Is merely a very 
 sensuous woman who at the crisis loses nerve and 
 fear-driven flies to the tower as she fled from Ac- 
 tium. But Antony is all the world to her, and 
 when he dies she declares, or Shakespeare with a 
 contemptuous allusion to Herbert declares — for 
 no woman and especially no old wanton feels con- 
 tempt of youth : 
 
 . . . young boys and girls 
 Are level now with men; the odds is gone, 
 And there is nothing left remarkable 
 Beneath the visiting moon. 
 
 The last scenes are the finest of all. Cleo- 
 patra says to Iras: 
 
 My desolation does begin to make 
 A better life . . . 
 
 This great artist in duplicity Is not to be cheated: 
 she distrusts Caesar: 
 
 . . . girls, he words me, that I should not 
 Be noble to myself: . . . 
 
 She will not grace his triumph, nor be " chastised 
 with the sober eye of dull Octavia . . ." she has 
 
 233 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 " immortal longings " In her and at the supreme 
 hour the high temper of Shakespeare's mistress 
 breaks Into mocking: she wants to hear the asp 
 " call great Cassar, ass unpollcledl " 
 
 Aristotle has been excessively praised because 
 in his " Poetics " he tells us how the pity and fear 
 of a great tragedy should always lead to a " ka- 
 tharsls '' or purification; perhaps the better phrase 
 would be to something consoling — a reconcilia- 
 tion. Aristotle drew his theories from Sophocles, 
 and Shakespeare with a still finer sense of fitness 
 than the Greek poet recognized the same neces- 
 sity. He always gives to his favourite characters 
 some final word of appreciation, which may rec- 
 oncile us to some extent to their unhappy fate. 
 Hamlet at the end is called a '' noble heart " ; 
 Brutus was " the noblest Roman of them all " ; 
 Othello was " great of heart," and so now at the 
 end I look for the supreme word about Cleopatra- 
 Fitton. I confess I have In mind that " modern 
 grace " which even the bitter Bertram-Herbert 
 admitted in her; and I am delighted to find that 
 Shakespeare has given the self-same word to the 
 cold Csesar. He says : 
 
 . . . she looks like sleep 
 As she would catch another Antony, 
 In her strong toil of grace. 
 234. 
 
Cleopatra-Fitton 
 
 It Is Caesar again who pronounces the supreme 
 valediction upon the lovers In which Antony's 
 words at the beginning of the drama are re- 
 echoed: 
 
 No grave upon the earth shall clip in it 
 A pair so famous . . . 
 
 What a pity It Is that Shakespeare and Mary 
 FItton do not sleep together In the great Abbey! 
 
 In this picture of Cleopatra we have by far the 
 finest and most complex portrait of Shakespeare's 
 mistress; we even learn some new physical fea- 
 tures from It; she was tall with a high forehead, 
 and oval rather than round face. Lofty stature 
 suits the superb gypsy-wanton with her white 
 skin and pitch-black eyes and hair. Two or three 
 mental traits, too, are here given her that are 
 omitted or only suggested In the other character 
 sketches. In spite of the " siren tears " we read 
 about In the sonnets, In the dramatic presenta- 
 tions Shakespeare's mistress does not weep; but 
 here she uses that weakness; she goes further, 
 she even dies frequently, Enobarbus says. In order 
 to subdue her lover: no wonder Antony-Shake- 
 speare declares " she's cunning past man's 
 thought." Here, too, her passionate love Is dis- 
 played while her wantonness Is almost left out of 
 
 235 
 
The IVomen of Shakespeare 
 
 sight: on the other hand, her high courage and 
 contempt of death are as an aureole to her — a j 
 most astonishing, veracious, gaudy portrait I call 
 it, the finest beyond compare in all literature, 
 worthy to stand with Hamlet and with Falstaff 
 for ever. So much his passionate love did for 
 Shakespeare and for us. 
 
 235 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 coriolanus : volumnia, the portrait of 
 Shakespeare's mother 
 
 "DEFORE I consider his last four or Rve 
 dramas or '' romances " as they have been 
 aptly called, I must glance at a play which was 
 written just before his breakdown. Coriolanus 
 Is an even poorer play than Timon; It belongs to 
 the same period of the poet^s life. There are 
 only two noteworthy things In It: the boundless 
 admiration of Coriolanus for his mother, and his 
 contempt and loathing of the common people. 
 
 We have seen again and again In the course of 
 these studies how Shakespeare was helped by the 
 storytellers, poets and historians from whom he 
 took the skeleton of his plays. Coriolanus Is an 
 instance of the contrary and shows how he could 
 be led astray by his authority, and through abso- 
 lute ignorance of Roman history, could turn a pic- 
 ture into a monstrous caricature. The source of 
 Coriolanus was Plutarch's life translated by 
 
 237 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 North. Plutarch's view of the Roman plebs in the 
 time of Coriolanus was coloured by prepossessions 
 derived from the mob of his own time, and it suf- 
 fered besides from his strong aristocratic preju- 
 dice. He speaks of the popular leaders as " se- 
 ditious tribunes," and represents the plebs as a 
 needy rabble. But Plutarch had plain facts be- 
 fore him and had to admit that the poor rabble 
 and their tribunes were the military mainstay of 
 the State, whose valour often put the better 
 classes to shame. The way the plebs won redress 
 of intolerable grievances by withdrawing to the 
 Sacred Mount was a convincing proof of self- 
 control and disciplined civil temper. 
 
 Shakespeare caricatures all this. He himself, 
 as we have seen, was an aristocrat by nature, in 
 love with all the distinctions, dignities and deli- 
 cacies of life, an artist-aristocrat of the finest 
 poetic sensibilities, and as a poet-dramatist in the 
 age of Elizabeth his naturally aristocratic temper 
 was cultivated to excess. The middle classes of 
 his time were puritans, who misunderstood and 
 hated his art, and were despised by him as " lying 
 shop-keepers " and insane sectaries. The people 
 to him were mere groundlings, a low mob with- 
 out understanding or taste. In spite of his loy- 
 alty to truth, he attributes the victory of Agin- 
 
 238 
 
Volumnia: Shakespeare^ s Mother 
 
 court to the king and nobles though it was won 
 by the common English archers, and though this 
 historical fact was before him, vouched for by 
 Hollnshed. In Coriolanus he again distorts facts 
 to suit his aristocratic prepossessions. He rep- 
 resents the people as curs, " hares and geese," 
 their caps all " greasy," their breaths " foul." 
 It may be said that Shakespeare is here thinking 
 of the English people and not of the Roman, but 
 bad as the English common people may be, stupid 
 as they are, sheepish as they are, they yet have 
 courage enough, courage indeed, of a high good- 
 humoured kind, but Shakespeare denies his mob 
 courage and Indeed every virtue. 
 
 From the point of view of art, this is not the 
 worst fault of his aristocratic bias. Again and 
 again in earlier plays he has shown that he knew 
 very little about men of action; the fighting men 
 and adventurers who were the most characteristic 
 product of that jostling time were not his favour- 
 ites. He has never given us any portraits of the 
 Drakes or even of the Raleighs, and here where 
 'he has to paint an aristocrat of great courage who 
 is self-willed and self-opinionated, he exaggerates 
 his faults, and turns Coriolanus into an insuffer- 
 able braggart and bully, thus rendering his would- 
 be tragedy ridiculous. Plutarch, helped by facts, 
 
 239 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 was in this Instance a far better artist than Shake- 
 speare. He says of Corlolanus: his "natural 
 wit and great heart did marvellously stir up his 
 courage to do and attempt notable acts " ; but 
 " for lack of education he was so choleric and Im- 
 patient that he would yield to no living creature; 
 which made him churlish, uncivil, and altogether 
 unfit for any man's conversation." It Is just this 
 " lack of education " which has always been the 
 most conspicuous fault In the English aristocrat; 
 he has always been, as Matthew Arnold put It, 
 " Impervious to Ideas," and one would have ex- 
 pected that Shakespeare, who loved books and 
 book-learning and large generalizations, would 
 have noted this and drawn the moral from It; but 
 he does not. His Corlolanus does not sin out 
 of Ignorance and hatred of Ideas; but from In- 
 sensate pride. Brutus the tribune says rightly 
 enough that Corlolanus tops " all others In boast- 
 ing," and as If Corlolanus himself wished to 
 prove this, he declares he could fight " forty citi- 
 zens," and this piece of braggadocio is not his 
 worst. When banished from Rome he takes 
 refuge with Aufidlus. In the house of his great 
 enemy he cannot help bragging of his victories 
 over the people to whom he has fled for refuge. 
 The scene is incredible. Aufidlus praises him: 
 
 240 
 
Volumnia: Shakespeare^ s Mother 
 
 Saj, what's thy name? 
 Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face 
 Bears a command in't_, though thy tackle's torn. 
 Thou show'st a noble vessel: what's thy name? 
 
 CoR. Prepare thy brow to frown: know'st thou me yet? 
 
 AuF. I know thee not: thy name? 
 
 Cor. My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done 
 To thee particularly and all the Volsces 
 Great hurt and mischief: thereto witness may 
 My surname, Coriolanus. . . . 
 
 This out-Pistols Pistol, and it does not stand 
 alone. Coriolanus brags and bullies so that we 
 lose sympathy with him and take sides with the 
 mob and their tribunes. Again and again Shake- 
 speare makes similar if less grave faults; it is fair 
 to say that the worst blunders in all his work, such 
 as this silly picture of bragging Coriolanus, the 
 disgusting caricature of Joan of Arc, and that 
 dreadful scene in The Merchant of Venice where 
 young noblemen insult Shylock, who has been 
 cheated and broken by a quibbling trick, are due 
 directly to Shakespeare's snobbislnije^ As an 
 artist his excessive volubility, even, is not so per- 
 nicious a weakness. 
 
 The other theme of the play is far more finely 
 handled, and is far more necessary to our under- 
 standing of Shakespeare's life. In Plutarch, the 
 mother of Coriolanus has more influence In the 
 crises of the play than his wife. Shakespeare ex- 
 
 241 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 aggerated this tendency. The wife is gracious 
 and charming in Plutarch, but Shakespeare finds 
 a new trait to give her which is extraordinarily 
 characteristic. We have seen how in youth he 
 disliked his own wife for her violent temper and 
 bitter scolding tongue : Coriolanus here addresses 
 his wife as: " My gracious silence." One cannot 
 but smile at the nursed resentment and curious 
 praise. 
 
 The wife plays hardly any part in the drama; 
 the whole interest is concentrated on the mother 
 and son. It is Volumnia who urges her son to 
 be " mild " and win the consulship; it is she who 
 reproves him for his impatient despotic temper, 
 who Induces him at the last to forego his revenge 
 on the Romans, and spare his native city. The 
 speech of Coriolanus when he is on the point of 
 yielding to his mother's pleading is impossible in 
 the mouth of a Roman general, but is all the more 
 characteristic of Shakespeare at this time: 
 
 Like a dull actor now 
 I have forgot my part, and I am out. 
 Even to a full disgrace. . . . 
 
 . . . You gods ! I prate. 
 And the most noble mother of the world 
 Leave unsaluted: sink my knee, i' the earth 
 Of thy deep duty more impression show 
 Than that of common sons. . . . 
 242 
 
Volumnia: Shakespeare's Mother 
 
 Surely in the last lines of this self-revealing 
 
 speech we catch an echo of Shakespeare's pride in 
 
 himself and his intense admiration of his mother. 
 
 Why should Coriolanus praise his mother to us? 
 
 We expect here that he will ask her to share in 
 
 the joy of his victory and exult in his success. 
 
 But what he does is to praise her as if she were 
 
 dead; and the truth is that Shakespeare's mother 
 
 died in 1608 some little while before Coriolanus 
 
 was written. It seems to me that his main reason 
 
 for writing the play was to give some record of 
 
 his admiration for his mother. A little later he 
 
 lets her say: 
 
 . . . There's no man in the world 
 More bound to's mother. . . . 
 
 Perhaps some of my readers may wish me to 
 carry my guess-work or divination of Shake- 
 speare's real meaning a little further. Volumnia 
 
 says: 
 
 . . . here he lets me prate 
 Like one i' the stocks. Thou hast never in thy life 
 Show'd thy dear mother any courtesy. 
 When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood. 
 Has cluck'd thee to the wars and safely home, 
 Loaden with honour. . . . 
 
 Now consider the wildly exaggerated lines: 
 
 . . . Thou hast never in thy life 
 
 Show'd thy dear mother any courtesy. . . . 
 
 243 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Corlolanus, as we have seen, has shown his mother 
 every courtesy, and followed her advice again and 
 again. It is poor Shakespeare who in the bitter- 
 ness of his mourning and sorrow feels that he 
 has not done enough for his " dear " mother 
 while she was alive, has not rendered her courtesy 
 enough. I think it probable from the last lines 
 that Shakespeare when a youth had confided to 
 his mother his Intention of going to London, and 
 that she had encouraged him. 
 
 So far my guess-work is borne out by the text; 
 but now I would carry it a little farther than the 
 text may seem to justify. When Coriolanus 
 yields and agrees to be reconciled to the Romans, 
 this is how he talks : 
 
 O mother, mother ! 
 What have you done? Behold the heavens do ope, 
 The gods look down and this unnatural scene 
 They laugh at. O my mother, mother ! O ! 
 You have won a happy victory to Rome; 
 But, for your son believe it, O believe it. 
 Most dangerously you have with him prevail'd 
 If not most mortal to him. . . . 
 
 One might perhaps ask why the gods should 
 laugh at the scene. Nor can Coriolanus know 
 that the result of his yielding will be his murder; 
 it is all out of character, too, for a man brave 
 to madness to be more apprehensive for his own 
 
 244 
 
Volumnia: Shakespeare's Mother 
 
 safety than his mother. The fault Is slight, but 
 It Is there; the expressions are not finely suited to 
 the situation; they are a little strained and forced; 
 just enough to make me feel that his mother on 
 her death-bed had probably begged something of 
 Shakespeare which he had granted very reluct- 
 antly, and which to him had a touch of bitter hu- 
 mour In It. His mother, I feel, had made him 
 promise to be reconciled to his wife. Think of 
 the words; let them sink In the ear: 
 
 . . . O my mother^ mother! O! 
 You have won a happy victory to Rome; 
 Butj for your son believe it, O believe it. 
 Most dangerously you have with him prevaiFd. . . . 
 
 It Is all weak and gentle, false to Corlolanus; 
 but most true to Shakespeare because he knew 
 that a reconciliation with his wife could not be 
 other than formal to him and worse — " most 
 dangerous " in fact ! He could never forgive his 
 wife the injury she had done him In forcing him 
 to marry her, or the dangers she had exposed him 
 to when she drove him from Stratford with her 
 bitter scolding. 
 
 The high interest of Corlolanus is that Shake- 
 speare is intent on showing us in It how he loved 
 his mother, the confidante of his dreams and am- 
 bitions in boyhood, and how deeply he regretted 
 
 245 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 her: . . . " no man In the world" owed more 
 to his mother ..." the most noble mother of 
 the world." . . . 
 
 He paints her for us too; Volumnia has quick 
 temper but more Insight and good sense; she is 
 always able to control herself in deference to 
 judgment. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, 
 who could not read or write, had in her the wis- 
 dom of the finest English natures; she saw her 
 own faults and her son's, and usually counselled 
 moderation. It was not his quick, adventurous 
 and unfortunate father whom Shakespeare 
 adored; but his wise, loving mother. Every 
 mention of her in the play is steeped in tender- 
 ness; even the paltry, prejudiced tribune Siclnius 
 has to admit that Coriolanus " loved his mother 
 deeply." 
 
 The professor-mandarins will naturally pooh- 
 pooh all this as if it were the very extravagance of 
 conjecture; but after all it is for the reader to 
 judge between us. 
 
 246 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Shakespeare's daughter judith as marina, 
 perdita, and miranda 
 
 Wo ich ihn nicht hab' 
 
 1st mir das Grab 
 
 Die ganze Welt 
 
 1st mir vergaellt. — Faust. 
 
 TN the eleventh chapter we saw that the portrait 
 "■• of his " dark lady " as Cleopatra is at once 
 the truest and most complex portrait of his wan- 
 ton mistress that Shakespeare ever painted; it 
 was also his last portrait of her. Antony and 
 Cleopatra was probably written early in 1608 
 shortly before Mary Fitton married for the sec- 
 ond time, and left the court and Shakespeare for 
 ever. All the unquenched desire, all the ineffa- 
 ble regret and sadness of his long passion are in 
 those deathless words of the dying Antony: 
 
 Of many thousand kisses the poor last 
 I lay upon thy lips. 
 
 When Mary Fitton left him, Shakespeare fell 
 
 247 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 to despair. 7"he forces of youth in him were ex- 
 hausted; his nerves gave way, and he crept home 
 to Stratford a broken man. It is clear, as we 
 shall see from The Tempest, that it was the lov- 
 ing care and tenderness of his young daughter 
 Judith, and rest in his native air, which renewed 
 his lease of life. He was forty-five years of age 
 when he struggled again into the sunshine, shak- 
 ing and weak, and when he took up the pen once 
 more his work shows in every line diminished vi- 
 rility; of a sudden he had grown old. As I have 
 shown in The Man Shakespeare, all his later 
 " romances," are mere pale copies of earlier 
 comedies. The humour in him and the love of 
 life have grown faint; he cannot trouble to find 
 new stories, or rather, it is only the old ones which 
 appeal to him; he repeats himself. The story of 
 The Winter's Tale is taken from Much Ado; 
 Hermione is slandered Hero over again: and The 
 Tempest with its story of the two Dukes repeats 
 the theme of As You Like It. Cymbeline, too, 
 is hardly more than a mixture of the themes of 
 both these earlier comedies: Imogen is slandered 
 like Hero and wanders out into the world like 
 Rosalind. But in Pericles, The Winter^s Tale 
 and The Tempest we have a totally new figure, 
 that of a young innocent girl. As we have seen, 
 
 248 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 Shakespeare showed his grief for the death of his 
 mother and the death of his son very plainly; we 
 are now to learn what a profound impression his 
 young daughter Judith made on him. 
 
 In 1608, the same year in which Mary Fitton 
 married and left the Court, Shakespeare's mother 
 died. He was probably called back to Stratford 
 by the news of his mother's illness, and there he 
 came to know his daughter Judith intimately. 
 She was already twenty-two years of age. He 
 could not have seen much of her on his previous 
 visits; or perhaps he did not then need so much 
 the tenderness she had to give. For now she not 
 only became dear to him; but was a solace and 
 source of strength. From this time on she lives 
 for us in his art. To find her portrait in Marina 
 of Pericles, in Perdita of The Winter* s Tale, and 
 in Miranda of The Tempest will surprise some 
 readers, but the evidence is really quite sufficient. 
 It should strike everyone that all these plays arT\ 
 warmed, so to speak, with the joy of reunit^dj) 
 kinsfolk. All these maiden-heroines, too, have 
 abstract names and are all manifestly portrait^ 
 of the same girl, who was lost to her father] 
 (Perdita) and is now admired by him (Mi- 
 randa). She is dutiful and sweet-tempered, but 
 ^^bove all modest in mind and body. As we have 
 
 249 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 seen, all Shakespeare's pictures of girls before 
 his breakdown were tainted with coarseness which 
 often reached the impossible of uncharacteristic 
 lewdness; but Marina, Perdita, and Miranda pro- 
 claim themselves virtuous at all costs. Instead 
 of Juliet's and Portia's delighted freedom of 
 speech we have now a careful avoidance by his 
 girls of suggestive allusions. 
 
 The change is abrupt and marked, and In itself 
 extraordinary. I can only explain it by the sup- 
 position that it was his daughter who brought 
 Shakespeare to better knowledge. He goes out 
 of his way to tell us in The Tempest that when 
 cast adrift to die, it was his angelic daughter who 
 won him back to life and endurance. The con- 
 fession in the mouth of a magician Is so extraor- 
 dinary that I may be forgiven for believing that 
 it Is Shakespeare's account of what his daughter 
 really was to him In his misery and loneliness: 
 
 . . . O, a cherubin 
 Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile 
 Infused with a fortitude from heaven. 
 When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt 
 Under my burthen groan'd; which raised in me 
 An undergoing stomach to bear up 
 Against what should ensue. 
 
 How the babe only three years old could show 
 
 250 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 " fortitude " Prospero does not tell us; but now 
 let us consider these '' romances " In order. 
 
 Pericles Is the earliest of them and Is to me 
 very Interesting for a dozen reasons, the most ob- 
 vious, though certainly not the most Important, 
 being that the commentators all agree that '' large 
 parts of It are not by Shakespeare." The poets 
 as usual set the tune. Coleridge finds In the be- 
 ginning signs of Shakespeare's " Indifference," 
 and Swinburne talks of the " lean and barren 
 style of these opening acts." Thus encouraged 
 the mandarins give tongue boldly. Professor 
 Herford bundles the first two acts neck and crop 
 out of Shakespeare's work: '' they are equally de- 
 void of the brilliance of his youth and of the sub- 
 tle technique of his maturity. They combine the J 
 Imperfect craft of the 'prentice with the dulness of/ 
 the journeyman." How categorical these pro- 
 fessors are, to be sure, in condemning poor 'pren- 
 tice Shakespeare who had already a dozen master- 
 pieces to his credit — masterpieces they are not 
 able to understand! 
 
 Even Marina's story does not please the pro- 
 fessor completely. The " powerful realism of 
 Boult and his crew " In the brothel was, he as- 
 sures us airily, " within the compass of many a 
 Jacobean dramatist." 
 
 251 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 It is beside my purpose at the moment to prove 
 that all this Is evidence of something else than 
 Shakespeare's incompetence. 
 
 I find the master on almost every page in Peri- 
 cles. The character of Pericles is manifestly 
 Shakespeare's work from beginning to end: he Is, 
 Indeed, an Incarnation of Shakespeare himself, 
 and his words are curiously characteristic and 
 beautiful. Take almost his first speech in the 
 first scene of the first act, when the daughter of 
 Antlochus enters: 
 
 See where she comes apparelVd like the spring, 
 Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king 
 Of every virtue gives renown to men! 
 Her face the book of praises, where is read. 
 Nothing but curious pleasures as from thence. 
 Sorrow were ever raz'd, and testy wrath 
 Could never be her mild companion. . . . 
 
 Where else but In Shakespeare could one find 
 anything like the magnificent lines I have put in 
 italics? Swinburne's idea of a " lean and barren 
 style " is amusing. I wonder how many finer 
 lines there are in all the treasury of English verse 
 than this: 
 
 See where she comes apparell'd like the spring. 
 
 The very soul of Shakespeare is in the divine 
 phrase; and what an optimist he was even to the 
 
 252 
 
 II 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 end; he will always have it that it is "virtue 
 gives renown to men," whereas surely it is the ex- 
 traordinary, the singular, whether for good or 
 evil; the "sport," in fact. Nero will probably 
 be remembered for his crimes as long as Marcus 
 Aurelius for virtue. 
 
 The whole passage is as characteristic of 
 Shakespeare as anything that can be found in all 
 his works. The phrase that her face is " the 
 book of praises, where is read nothing but curious 
 pleasures," fills me with wonder for its peculiar 
 frankness and with hope that Shakespeare will go 
 on to tell us more about his mistress. We shall 
 see in a moment that the hope is in part justified. 
 Now I must proceed with the proof that the writ- 
 ing is Shakespeare's and his alone. 
 
 The pregnant confusion of that " testy wrath " 
 and " mild companion " should have brought 
 even the professors to knowledge, for it is an 
 excellent instance of Shakespeare's overhasty 
 thought. 
 
 The next speech of Pericles is just as charac- 
 teristic. It begins: 
 
 Antiochus, I thank thee who hath taught 
 My frail mortality to know itself; 
 
 I do not need to quote more; this is Shakespeare 
 
 253 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 speaking as he speaks through Hamlet, without 
 disguise. 
 
 Then Pericles is given the riddle to read, 
 and at once he understands that the girl he loves 
 and seeks In marriage, has been guilty of Incest 
 with her own father. This is how Pericles- 
 Shakespeare takes the blow: 
 
 . . . O you powers 
 That give heaven countless eyes to view men's acts. 
 Why cloud they not their sights perpetually. 
 If this be true, which makes me pale to read it.^* 
 Fair glass of light, I loved you, and could still, 
 Were not this glorious casket stored with ill; 
 But I must tell you now my thoughts revolt; 
 For he's no man on whom perfections wait 
 That knowing sin within will touch the gate. 
 You are a fair viol, and your senses the strings; 
 Who, finger'd to make man his lawful music. 
 Would draw heaven down, and all the gods, to hearken: 
 But being play'd upon before your time, 
 Hell only danceth at so harsh a chime. 
 Good sooth I care not for you. . . . 
 
 This passage Is of extraordinary Interest and 
 Importance : it is at once a confession of Shake- 
 speare's love — " glorious casket " — and a con- 
 demnation of his mistress's wantonness. It Is 
 not the Incest which shocks Pericles but the fact 
 that the girl he loves has been " play'd upon " be- 
 fore her time. Mary Fitton had been " play'd 
 upon " before she met Shakespeare at sixteen 
 
 254 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 years of age. He is extravagantly severe to her 
 offence; she came to him tuned to another's play- 
 ing, and what words he finds to justify his se- 
 verity: 
 
 For he's no man on whom perfections wait 
 
 That knowing sin within will touch the gate. . . . 
 
 What a fine mind was Shakespeare's! — " man 
 on whom perfections wait." Surely this is the 
 same poet who in Hamlet wrote the marvellous 
 eulogy on man. But I cannot stomach his con- 
 ventional, Pharisaical sex-morality. I am heart- 
 glad he was more tolerant in action than in 
 speech, and had proved such sin a good many 
 times before condemning it. 
 
 The next speech of Pericles is dramatically 
 better suited to the circumstances, and at the same 
 time no less characteristic of Shakespeare. He 
 says with a certain irony: 
 
 Great king. 
 
 Few love to hear the sins they love to act; 
 
 'Twould braid yourself too near for me to tell it: 
 
 Who has a book of all that monarchs do. 
 
 He's more secure to keep it shut than shown: 
 
 For vice repeated is like the wandering wind, 
 
 Blows dust in others' eyes to spread itself; . . . 
 
 The reticence of speech and Its justification by 
 fear are peculiarly English. 
 
 It would be difficult to find a first scene of a 
 %B5 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 first act in which Shakespeare has revealed him- 
 self with such frankness and such masterly skill 
 as in this first scene of Pericles. 
 
 In the second act Pericles is home again in 
 Tyre and, instead of rejoicing at his escape, de- 
 clares he is full of melancholy without rhyme 
 or reason — the uncaused melancholy, again, of 
 Jaques and Hamlet and Antonio. Here are the 
 words : 
 
 Let none disturb us. 
 Why should this change of thoughts. 
 The sad companion, dull-eyed melancholy, 
 Be my so used a guest .... 
 
 Here pleasures court mine eyes, and mine eyes shun 
 them . . . 
 
 I need not continue: it must be enough now just 
 to state here that the scene with the fishermen in 
 this second act is so characteristic of Shakespeare 
 that one might give parallel words from other 
 plays for almost every line of it. The truth seems 
 to be that in this play Shakespeare often expresses 
 new ideas, and naturally his word-music suffers. 
 But even Coleridge and Swinburne read Shake- 
 speare by accent and adjective, by trick of rhythm 
 and word, and knew but little of his soul; his 
 range of mind was clean beyond them, and they 
 could not recognize some of his finest work. 
 
 256 
 
Shakespeare s Daughter 'Judith 
 
 Professor Herford asserts that the " opening 
 of the third act, by one of the most amazing 
 transitions In literature, suddenly steeps us In the 
 atmosphere of high poetry." But there Is no 
 such transition, and he who like the professor 
 would attribute the scene of Pandar, Boult and 
 Bawd In the Brothel to any one but Shakespeare, 
 Is, as the French say, " capable of anything." 
 On one page I find Boult crying to Marina : " that 
 she would make a puritan of the devil, if he could 
 cheapen a kiss of her," and on the very next page 
 Lyslmachus says : 
 
 She'll do the deed of darkness, 
 
 the very phrase Edgar uses In Lear. 
 
 Some day I may go through this comedy and 
 show Shakespeare's handiwork on every page as 
 I see It; but here I have perhaps done enough. 
 
 Once we accept the fact that Pericles Is an in- 
 carnation of Shakespeare himself and that the 
 play is his, two points must Interest us. First of 
 all, Pericles was one of Shakespeare's most popu- 
 lar plays; it was therefore condemned by the en- 
 vious Jonson as " a mouldy tale." Its popularity 
 was chiefly due to the scenes in the brothel. Did 
 Shakespeare deliberately Invent these scenes to 
 win the applause of the many? I believe he did, 
 
 257 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 just as he beat the patriotic drum in Henry V, 
 long after he had ceased to feel very patriotic. 
 Secondly, what most surprised Shakespeare in his 
 daughter Judith-Marina was her modesty. Her 
 innate purity, indeed, astonished him to such a 
 degree, impressed him so sincerely, that he shows 
 it to us by placing her in a brothel and depicting 
 her as immediately converting all comers and even 
 the lewd servant to belief in her angelic innocence. 
 And she carries it all through with a high hand. 
 In spite of his disillusions and despairings, Shake- 
 speare still idealizes life to an extraordinary ex- 
 tent. 
 
 Marina hardly lives for us though Shakespeare 
 has lent her his singing robes again and again. 
 She cries: 
 
 O that the gods 
 
 Would set me free from this unhallow'd place. 
 Though they did change me to the meanest bird 
 That flies i' the purer air! 
 
 But on the very next page she tells Boult he is: 
 
 . . . the damned doorkeeper to every 
 Coistrel that comes inquiring for his Tib . . . 
 
 which IS excellent Shakespeare who learned scur- 
 rility with Doll Tearsheet and Falstaff, but cer- 
 tainly Is not pleasing in the virginal Marina, and 
 
 258 
 
I 
 
 Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 in the next page when Boult asks, "Can you 
 teach all this you speak of? " she replies: 
 
 Prove that I cannot, take me home again. 
 And prostitute me to the basest groom 
 That doth frequent your house. 
 
 ** Prove that I cannot, bring me here again," 
 would be tremendous in its reticence, but as the 
 phrase stands, and especially as amplified by the 
 next two lines, it becomes a rank offence. It evi- 
 dently took more than Lear's " civet " to sweeten 
 Shakespeare's imagination. 
 
 Of course, this Marina must go on to brag of 
 her gentle birth: 
 
 My derivation was from ancestors 
 
 Who stood equivalent with mighty kings. . . . 
 
 The sketch is not realized; Marina cannot be said 
 to live for us in spite of her love of flowers and 
 her purity, but this last quality makes her so 
 strange an apparition In Shakespeare's pages, 
 that we can set her down as a reflection from the 
 real world, and not an Imaginary figure. 
 
 The Winter's Tale has a second motive in it: 
 not only does it glow with the joy of reunited 
 kinsfolk, but like Cymheline, Pericles and Henry 
 VIII, it is also touched with the tragedy of slan- 
 dered womanhood. Having come to life again 
 
 259 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 and some measure of strength, Shakespeare can- 
 not help playing sadly with the idea of the joy 
 that might have been his, had Mary Fitton been 
 true, had his jealousy slandered her. When 
 Leontes sees his wife's image he cries: 
 
 No settled senses of the world can match 
 The pleasure of that madness. . . . 
 
 I find further evidence that Shakespeare is think- 
 ing of his love, Mary Fitton, in The Winter* s 
 Tale, as much as he is thinking of his reunion 
 with his daughter, in an incident which takes 
 place towards the end of the play. Paulina re- 
 proaches the gentleman for praising Perdita 
 beyond Hermione: 
 
 . . . your writing now 
 Is colder than that theme, * She had not been^ 
 Nor was not to be equall'd ' ; — thus your verse 
 Flower'd with her beauty once. . . . 
 
 That " She had not been, nor was not to be 
 equall'd " is significant to me. 
 
 It is apparent that Shakespeare has given Mary 
 Fitton's courage and quick temper to Paulina, 
 and by adding loyalty has turned her into an- 
 other Beatrice. But the most convincing piece 
 of evidence of the personal feeling in the play 
 lies in the fact that Shakespeare here, in Leontes, 
 
 260 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 merely copies the jealousy which he has already 
 depicted for us in Hamlet and Othello, and which 
 he will paint again in Posthumus. It is the act 
 always that enrages him, and not the hurt to 
 tenderness nor the loss of affection: 
 
 . . . his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by 
 Sir Smile, his neighbour. . . . 
 
 It is the outward and visible signs of the falsity 
 which madden him: 
 
 Is whispering nothing? 
 Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? 
 Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career 
 Of laughter with a sigh? — a note infallible 
 Of breaking honesty — . . . 
 
 This Shakespeare-Leontes, too, will generalize 
 his affliction and rave like Lear and Timon: 
 
 " It is a bawdy planet ... no barricado for 
 a belly . . . many thousands on^s have the dis- 
 ease and feePt not. . . ." 
 
 A chief feature of all these romances written 
 after his breakdown is that Shakespeare falls back 
 again into his incorrigible idealism : character is 
 immutable. In the first scene of the first act, 
 young Prince Mamillius is praised by all the gen- 
 tlemen with superlatives that mock reality. It 
 is fitting enough In Paulina to call him the " jewel 
 
 261 
 
The JVomen oj Shakespeare 
 
 of children," but men don't praise another man's 
 child so extravagantly. Shakespeare is evidently 
 thinking of his son Hamnet who died in boyhood. 
 But his idealism comes to clearest viev^^ in his pic- 
 ture of Perdita. She is like a sketch copied on 
 tracing paper of Marina. There is the same 
 love of flowers, but enskied now in the rarest 
 beauty of expression. There is the same innate 
 purity; she judges her lover by herself: 
 
 By the p?itt(Tn of mine own thoughts I cut out 
 Tlie purity of his. . . . 
 
 She loves modesty of speech too: she begs Flori- 
 zel to warn Autolycus that " he use no scurrilous 
 words in's tunes." Yet every now and then 
 Shakespeare mars even Perdita's maiden purity 
 by his own rank imaginings, as he docs Marina's, 
 though not so grossly. Perdita speaks of Flori- 
 zel as: 
 
 ... a bank for h)ve to lie and play on: 
 Not like a eor.S(t; or, if not to be buried, 
 ]Jijt quiek and in niy arms. . . . 
 
 But a girl cannot be painted by two or three sim- 
 ple touches such as modesty, a love of flowers, 
 and a pout of self-will, for these qualities are 
 common to girlhood. There are not enough in- 
 dividual features given to Perdita to make her 
 
 262 
 
 i 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 live for us, and, worst of all, there are no faults; 
 she does not cast a shadow. 
 
 It takes passion to teach a man what a woman 
 Is; at any rate it took passion to teach Shake- 
 speare, for without it, he could not even portray 
 the daughter he loved. Perdita is a prettier and 
 daintier sketch than Marina, but, after all, she is 
 only the merest sketch. 
 
 Everything I have said of The Winter^s Tale, 
 I could repeat about Cymbeline. The two mo- 
 tives of his later romances are both repeated in 
 it: joy in the reunion of kindred and the tragedy 
 of slandered womanhood. But Shakespeare has 
 enriched Cymbeline with a careful full-length por- 
 trait of himself In Posthumus, a stalder Hamlet. 
 Again and again, now through this character, 
 and now through that, he speaks of Mary Fitton 
 and his love for her with the frankness of an old 
 memory. The Idealizing tendencies In him come 
 to full flower in this play. He will paint us the 
 rose of womanhood in Imogen, and nine out of 
 ten readers, and all the poets, have cheered this 
 long catalogue of feminine perfections as a mas- 
 terpiece of portraiture. Imogen, of course, like 
 Perdita, does not live for a moment: she has not 
 a single fault; she Is faultily faultless Indeed, in- 
 humanly perfect; and no man or woman can be 
 
 263 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 made lifelike to us without defects, vices which 
 bear some subtle relation to the virtues. Shake- 
 speare, too, saw this, but his idealizing tendency 
 prevented him from acting on it. In The Tem- 
 pest his Ferdinand says : 
 
 . . . never any 
 With so full a soul, but some defect in her 
 Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed 
 And put it to the foil. . . . 
 
 This Imogen is not only an abstract of perfection, 
 she is perfection as imagined by weak old age, and 
 not responsive-quick as desired by lusty youth. 
 One has only to put her beside Juliet for a mo- 
 ment to realize how Shakespeare has declined 
 into the vale of years. Juliet says : 
 
 Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night. 
 That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo 
 Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. 
 Lovers can see to do their amorous rites 
 By their own beauties. 
 
 Posthumus says of Imogen: 
 
 Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd 
 And pray'd me oft forbearance; did it with 
 A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't 
 Might well have warmed old Saturn. 
 
 Neither of these expressions Is finely character- 
 istic; but of the two the words of Juliet are far 
 
 264 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 the truer and more convincing. There is a 
 deeper reality in Juliet's passion; and in her high 
 temper and contempt of the Nurse we catch the 
 features of the living model which lend life 
 to the idealized sketch. Shakespeare's greatest 
 pictures of women are not Perdita nor Imogen, 
 much less any of the goody-goody nonentities such 
 as Ophelia or Desdemona; but Juliet, Beatrice, 
 Rosaline, and Cressida, and above all, the in- 
 comparable Cleopatra, '* the serpent of old Nile." 
 The soul of Cymbeline is to be found in Shake- 
 speare's portrait of himself as Posthumus, and 
 the description of his mad jealousy. He has 
 been in the valley of the shadow of death, and 
 has crept out of it into the sunshine, shaken and 
 infirm, and yet as soon as the blood begins to 
 move again in his veins the memories of his lost 
 mistress begin to throb and ache: the jealous 
 rage of her infidelities burns in him till he dies. 
 Lear's image is the finest word for Shakespeare 
 after his breakdown: 
 
 You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave. 
 ... I am bound 
 
 Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears 
 i Do scald like molten lead. 
 
 We are forced to recognize in this jealous rage 
 of Leontes and of Posthumus an echo of the same 
 I 265 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 insensate passion that raved In Hamlet and 
 Othello, and screamed In Lear and Timon. 
 Leontes uses Hamlet's very words: he talks of 
 *' paddling palms " {Hamlet, Act III, sc. 4), and 
 Posthumus will generalize his anger till It reaches | 
 the universal condemnation of womanhood of 
 Lear and Timon. He says : 
 
 Is there no way for men to be but women 
 
 Must be half-workers? We are all bastards; . , . 
 
 Again it is the act enrages him: 
 
 ... I thought her 
 
 As chaste as unsunn'd snow, O all the devils! 
 
 This yellow lachimo, in an hour, was't not? — 
 
 Or less, — at first? — perchance he spoke not, but 
 
 Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one. 
 
 Cried " O " ; and mounted ; found no opposition 
 
 But what he look'd for should oppose and she 
 
 Should from encounter guard. . . . 
 
 This Posthumus has thought over every fault 
 a woman can possess; he has lived with jealousy 
 for years: 
 
 . . . could I find out 
 
 The woman's part in me! for there's no motion 
 That tends to vice in man, but I affirm 
 It is the woman's part: be it lying, note it. 
 The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers; 
 Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers revenge, hers; 
 Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain, 
 Nice longings, slanders, mutability, 
 
 966 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 All thoughts that may be named, nay, that hell knows, 
 
 Why hers, in part, or all; but rather all; 
 
 For even to vice 
 
 They are not constant, but are changing still 
 
 One vice, but of a minute old, for one 
 
 Not half so old as that. I'll write against them. 
 
 Detest them, curse them: yet 'tis greater skill 
 
 In a true hate to pray they have their will: 
 
 The very devils cannot plague them better. 
 
 In these last two lines, I fancy, Shakespeare is 
 thinking of Mary Fitton's intrigue with Lord Her- 
 bert and her subsequent disappointment. 
 
 Posthumus, as I have shown elsewhere, is not 
 only Shakespeare in his jealousy, but Shakespeare 
 in every fault and every virtue. Shakespeare's 
 sympathy with the poor which we first heard in 
 Lear is here marked again : he says of the gods : 
 
 I know you are more clement than vile men 
 Who of their broken debtors take a third; 
 A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again 
 On their abatement. . . . 
 
 It would be interesting to hear Shakespeare^s 
 opinion of Mr. Chamberlain's bankruptcy laws in 
 which these same " vile men " take from their 
 " broken debtors," not a tenth or a sixth, but all 
 they have, and then hold their future to servitude. 
 But even from Shakespeare the English will only 
 learn the lessons which please them, and not the 
 nobler teaching. 
 
 267 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 Shakespeare's patriotism, too, is here defined. 
 Posthumus says : 
 
 For being now a favourer to the Briton, 
 No more a Briton. . . . 
 
 He is as wise, too, about life as Hamlet, and a 
 little more hopeless: he can see nothing beyond 
 the grave : 
 
 I tell thee fellow, there are none want eyes 
 To direct them the way I am going, but such 
 As wink and will not use them . . . 
 
 Like Prospero this Posthumus finds the " fan- 
 gled world " a dream. 
 
 I may be thought to be going too far when I 
 say that Shakespeare brings in the father of Post- 
 humus as an easy way to speak again of Herbert: 
 
 Why did you suffer lachimo. 
 
 Slight thing of Italy. . . . 
 
 To taunt his nobler heart and brain 
 
 With needless jealousy; 
 
 And to become the geek and scorn 
 
 O' th' other's villany? 
 
 That " slight thing of Italy " is to me a side- 
 long glance at the Italian vices of Lord William 
 Herbert and the Italianate Englishman — the foul 
 suggestion of Parolles and of Troilus and Cres- 
 sida here repeated again and emphasized. 
 
 268 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 Shakespeare Is manifestly thinking of Mary 
 FItton when Cymbellne thus excuses his blind love 
 for the Queen: 
 
 Mine eyes 
 
 Were not in faulty for she was beautiful; 
 
 Mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my heart. 
 
 That thought her like her seeming; it had been vicious 
 
 To have mistrusted her: yet O my daughter! 
 
 That it was folly in me^ thou may'st say. 
 
 And prove it in thy feeling. Heaven mend all! 
 
 It looks to me as If Shakespeare had told his love- 
 story to his young daughter. The end Is curi- 
 ously characteristic: ''Heaven mend all!" I 
 cannot help recalling here Shakespeare-BIron's 
 expression sixteen years before, when he first met 
 his love and realized that she was wanton: 
 ''Heaven amend us: heaven amend us!" But 
 characteristic as It Is, It Is not all we expected 
 from Shakespeare; yet It was his last word on 
 Mary FItton and his passion for her. " I could 
 not help It," he cries, " the fault was In me as 
 well as in her. . . . Heaven amend us. . . . 
 Heaven mend all." 
 
 I have always regarded The Tempest as 
 Shakespeare's last work; his testament, I have 
 called It, to the English people. But before 
 speaking of Its high ethical content, let me just 
 say that the one female figure In it, Miranda, 
 
 269 
 
Tlie Women of Shakespeare 
 
 though much more carefully painted, Is not so 
 
 successful a portrait as that of Perdlta. Perdlta 
 
 has a touch of wilfulness In her and passion which 
 
 gives her a sort of life; she dances before us with 
 
 girlish grace, flower-crowned. Miranda Is all 
 
 pity, love, and humble courtesy; his daughter Is 
 
 no longer so present to Shakespeare; and In spite 
 
 of the magic of his poetry, Miranda is only an 
 
 ethereal shadow-shape, hardly as human. Indeed, 
 
 as Ariel. Let us take the confession of her love. 
 
 She says to Ferdinand: 
 
 ... by my modesty, 
 The jewel in my dower, I would not wish 
 Any companion in the world but you. 
 Nor can imagination form a shape. 
 Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle 
 Something too wildly. . . . 
 
 " I would not wish any companion in the world 
 but you," Is a gem of the purest water; but I can- 
 not abide the " modesty " business, and that 
 "prattle" gets on my nerves; It sounds like 
 a giddy young thing of forty-five talking; it is not 
 to be endured. A little later Ferdinand tells her 
 of his love, and Miranda weeps, in Early- Victo- 
 rian fashion, at what she longs for. My will to 
 admire is washed away; Miranda is too mawk- 
 ish — a mere projection of Shakespeare's Idealiz- 
 ing faculty, at the fag end of his life. 
 
 270 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 When she sees the courtiers she finds them 
 " goodly creatures," and exclaims : 
 
 How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world. 
 That has such people in't! 
 
 — gentle Shakespeare at his best. In spite of 
 weakness and ill-health he is still all admiration 
 of the world and in love with Its bravery and 
 novelty. 
 
 Of all his masterpieces, and he has written 
 more than a dozen, The Tempest is the most ex- 
 traordinary. We have noticed in him from the 
 beginning the strange union of poet-philosopher; 
 one moment he is all given to abstract thought 
 and generalization, stringing together a myriad 
 pearls of experience in one phrase; the next he is 
 all passion and poetry with the concrete instance 
 before him and nothing else. 
 
 It is a tendency in fine minds to become more 
 philosophic as they grow older, and to busy them- 
 selves with types and abstractions rather than 
 with human beings and human passions. Shake- 
 speare shows this impulse In The Tempest as 
 clearly as Goethe does In the second part of 
 Faust; but Shakespeare's abstractions are far 
 more human. As his thoughts soar Into the blue, 
 his poetry lifts with it, and the lyrical Interbreath- 
 
 271 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 ing of human passion adds the pulse of life to 
 the ineffable spirit-beauty of the thought. Shake- 
 speare had the shaping spirit of imagination at his 
 command to the very end; Ariel never leaves him 
 till set free. Goethe, on the other hand, took his 
 abstractions from the pure intellect : at his worst 
 he is as lifeless as Mr. H. G. Wells; his types 
 have no blood in them, no reality: he even gives 
 them abstract names — the Have-Soons and 
 Have-Nothings. But Caliban lives; he smacks 
 of the soil: we know his drunkenness, his desires, 
 his temper; even Ariel on occasion revisits the 
 glimpses of the moon. 
 
 I find proof of Shakespeare's divine intelli- 
 gence in every difference. Goethe has drawn out 
 the second part of Faust till it is a weariness of 
 the flesh even in memory; whereas The Tempest 
 is among the very shortest of Shakespeare's 
 dramas. Till the end our poet's judgment was 
 almost unerring; his instinct tremulously true, 
 like needle flickering about the pole. 
 
 He suffered in life infinitely more than Goethe, 
 more even than Dante, but he draws out of it all 
 into higher, sweeter air than even the greatest. 
 This Tempest, as I have said, is like sun-warmed, 
 love-warmed fruit, filled with the juice of human 
 kindness and sweet to the core. 
 
 272 
 
Shakespeare^s Daughter Judith 
 
 Shakespeare still carries about with him his in- 
 dividual peculiarities and little faults. Though 
 he sees himself now for the first time as he really 
 is — a mighty magician and master of a most 
 potent art, he cannot resist making himself a 
 prince as well; and perhaps with reason; for he is 
 in very deed, a sovereign whose kingdom is not 
 subject to boundary of space or time. 
 
 The personal touches are most dear to me. 
 Here at the very end he confesses how he gave 
 up all ambitious hopes of governing and desire of 
 state for secret study and the '' bettering " of his 
 mind. Like Carlyle he cherished the belief that 
 he could '' steer humanity " more wisely and to 
 nobler goals than the professional politicians, and 
 who can doubt his competence though, alas, the 
 silly sheep-world has not yet realized its need of 
 such divine guidance. Characteristic it is, too, of 
 Shakespeare that he should ascribe Prospero's be- 
 trayal and downfall to his trust in the brother he 
 loved. 
 
 Even here Shakespeare cannot forget the les- 
 sons of life. He is delighted to see that Ferdi- ~] 
 nand and his daughter are in love with each other; / 
 but he mistrusts this " swift business " and takes ) 
 pains to trouble the course of true love, " lest too \ 
 light winning make the prize light." His own un-" 
 
 273 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 4 
 
 happy marriage is in his mind, even at the su- \ 
 preme hour. He warns Ferdinand not to give | 
 *' dalliance too much the rein," for if enjoyment | 
 comes before marriage " barren hate " must fol- 
 low: I 
 
 Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew 
 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
 
 That you shall hate it both. . . . tj; 
 
 '''■*'■ 
 
 He confesses that unlike the mighty magician 
 he gives himself out for and really Is, he feels 
 very Infirm and weak, and often has to walk a 
 httle to still his " beating mind." j 
 
 What lessons too he preaches; the same lessons ': 
 he has preached all his life — repentance and for- j 
 giveness. Again and again he conjures us to j 
 trust the nobler reason, and not indulge in anger | 
 or revenge : 
 
 . . . the rarer action is i 
 
 In virtue than in vengeance; they being penitent. 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 Not a frown further. . . . 
 
 And at the very end when life Is waning to Its 
 exigent he will have all about him cheerful. He 
 will give to all the company, Including his enemies, 
 " calm seas " and " auspicious gales," for their 
 homecoming; for It Is a " brave new world " and 
 he loves the " goodly people " In It. He Is very 
 
 274 
 
Shakespeare's Daughter Judith 
 
 human too, and in spite of his courage and his 
 desire to give joy and sunny days to others, he 
 knows that for him the end is near and he shud- 
 ders at the thought of the grave. The epilogue 
 by Prospero is heart-breaking in Its unexpected, 
 despairing sadness : 
 
 Now my charms are all overthrown 
 And what strength I have's mine own 
 Which is most faint. . . . 
 Gentle breath of yours my sails 
 Must fill^ or else my project fails, 
 Which was to please. Now I want 
 Spirits to enforce, art to enchant. 
 And my ending is despair 
 Unless I be relieved by prayer. 
 Which pierces so that it assaults 
 Mercy itself and frees all faults. 
 As you from crimes would pardon'd be 
 Let your indulgence set me free. 
 
 In these extremes our Shakespeare discovers him- 
 self. At one moment smiling and full of good 
 wishes for all, the next in tears overwhelmed with 
 the sense of man's mortality. We leave him 
 here on his knees praying, our gentle Shakespeare, 
 the wisest and noblest of our race; for though we 
 do not kneel, and have almost forgotten how to 
 pray, to us as to him the road Is shrouded 
 in never-ending Night, and whither It leads no 
 man may divine. 
 
 275 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A LAST WORD ABOUT SHAKESPEARE's PASSION: 
 THE PASSIONATE PILGRIME : KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 O INCE I began publishing these studies In The 
 •^ English Review two questions have reached 
 me from all sides. " Can you prove to us," my 
 correspondents write, " a little more fully that 
 Shakespeare's affection for Herbert was merely 
 friendship, and can you show us more clearly why 
 he was unable to hold Mary FItton?" . . . 
 *' Have you any more evidence on either point? " 
 The first question Is no longer interesting. I 
 have handled It convincingly. It seems to me. In 
 the chapter on AlVs Well, and really the answer Is 
 obvious: Shakespeare and unnatural passion are a 
 contradiction In terms. Think of It. He was one 
 of the most Impressionable and articulate of 
 men; he had boys before him playing girls' parts 
 for twenty-five years, and with this terrible law- 
 less passion In him, he never lent one of them an 
 ambiguous word, or Invented an ambiguous situa- 
 tion. Much has been made of his custom of 
 
 276 
 
A Last Word 
 
 putting his heroines into boy's clothes; but the 
 critics forget that his heroines were boys and so 
 there was no suggestiveness in the changed rai- 
 ment. When Goethe shows his heroine in a 
 page's dress, the erotic appeal is undeniable. 
 
 To any one who knows Shakespeare and the 
 mocking intellect in him which created lago and 
 Richard III. and Thersltes, the assumption that 
 he concealed any passionate feeling is unthink- 
 able. He would have w^andered on the forbid- 
 den ground at every opportunity: the dangerous 
 suggestion would have lured him back uncon- 
 sciously again and again; his works would have 
 reeked with It. He was not ashamed of sensual 
 passion or Its expression; he delighted in both; 
 he avows his desire for his gypsy-wanton In every 
 poem and play in the plainest terms. He curses 
 himself for being too fond; while the despotic In- 
 tellect in him defends even his lechery: 
 
 For why should others' false adulterate eyes 
 
 Give salutation to my sportive blood? 
 
 Or on my frailties why are frailer spies. 
 
 Which in their wills count bad what I think good? 
 
 No, I am that I am, and they that level 
 
 At my abuses reckon up their own: 
 
 I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; 
 
 Sooner or later Shakespeare's imperial intelli- 
 gence would have asserted that what was good 
 
 277 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 for him was not to be condemned by any man or 
 by all men. But nowhere is there a hint of such 
 an attitude. On the contrary he condemns him- 
 self and his mistress again and again for yielding 
 to their natural passion. 
 
 Moreover, his envious contemporaries who 
 knew him most Intimately, who criticized him 
 most bitterly — men like Jonson who enjoyed his 
 friendship, and who were not afraid to state all 
 they knew about him — never hint at any such 
 vice. Jonson does not hesitate to say that Shake- 
 speare and his friend had between them " but 
 one drab " ; but he never suggests anything 
 worse. 
 
 The sonnets, too, addressed to the young man 
 which have any warmth of desire In them, are one 
 and all copied from the lyrics to the " dark lady "; 
 they are faint pastels, so to speak, of his passion 
 for his mistress. The person who cannot feel the 
 significance of this cannot read Shakespeare. Let 
 me give one final instance. We have seen that 
 again and again he has attributed to his mistress 
 that magic of personality which makes " the very 
 refuse of her deeds " become her, so that in his 
 mind her " worst all best exceeds." He has 
 given this very same praise to his Cleopatra, and 
 in Sonnet 96, he attributes this power to his youth- 
 
 278 
 
A Last Word 
 
 ful friend: but here the expression is merely 
 graceful and pretty and not passionate : 
 
 Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort. . . . 
 
 The following two lines of the sonnet show that 
 even here he is thinking more of his mistress than 
 of the youth; and then the tone changes to one of 
 affectionate reproof; he repeats Parolles' accusa- 
 tion that Bertram-Herbert ate up the fry of vir- 
 ginity like a whale, and begs his friend not to go 
 on in this evil way: 
 
 As on the finger of a throned queen 
 
 The basest jewel will be well esteem'd, 
 
 So are those errors that in thee are seen 
 
 To truths translated and for true things deem'd, 
 
 How many lambs might the stern wolf betray. 
 
 If like a lamb he could his looks translate! 
 
 How many gazers mightst thou lead away, 
 
 If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! 
 
 But do not so; I love thee in such sort 
 
 As thou being mine, mine is thy good report. 
 
 The palmary peculiarity of Shakespeare's in- 
 tellect is that it always stands for morality — even 
 for conventional sex-morality — for the rule and 
 not for the exception. He regards virginity as 
 the priceless jewel of a girl: virtue in a woman 
 has to him but one meaning; intimacy even in 
 those about to be married is a sad and terrible 
 mistake; lust is " an expense of spirit in a waste 
 
 279 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 of shame"; seduction a crime; he is English 
 through and through. Indeed he is so desper- 
 ately conventional in this respect that I have to 
 explain his obstinate narrowness to myself by 
 saying Mary Fitton was seduced before she met 
 him; probably he said to himself "had I been 
 the first with her; all would have been different: 
 I should have kept her true." Shakespeare only 
 touches upon inverted sex-relations casually, in 
 TroUus and Cressida, and then with uttermost 
 contempt and loathing. I will not labour this 
 point more, or discuss it further; it is beyond 
 doubt. 
 
 Shakespeare's relations with his wanton mis- 
 tress are infinitely more complicated and more in- 
 teresting. Let us now consider the whole story, 
 once more, and see whether we can read the 
 riddle of Mary Fitton's unfaith and .of Shake- 
 speare's lifelong passion. 
 
 In this final survey the reader will not only 
 have to use imaginative sympathy; he will have 
 to trust his guide a little as Dante trusted Vergil. 
 In the last resort it is by faith we learn; by faith 
 alone we grow. I have a very definite idea of 
 the relations between Shakespeare and his superb 
 mistress; so far as I can prove what they were, I 
 will; but beyond proof lies the magic perfumed 
 
 280 
 
A Last Word 
 
 garden of passion with its velvet-soft ways and 
 flower-starred banks where the whole being is 
 quickened to a diviner life, and men and women, 
 ill-matched in every other relation, may here win 
 to the soul's ecstasy. 
 
 First of all there appear to be contradictions, 
 difficult to reconcile, in his mistress's character 
 and in Shakespeare's view of her. The points 
 from which he sees her lie as far apart as winter 
 from summer; they are separated by all the infi- 
 nite between love and hate. From what we know, 
 indeed, a perfect synthesis of the contraries is 
 hardly to be expected. For example, in Sonnet 
 141, he tells his mistress she is not in any way 
 perfect; he notes a thousand errors in her, and 
 goes on to declare he does not desire her '^ sweet 
 body." Here are the astonishing lines: 
 
 Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted; 
 Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone^ 
 Nor taste^ nor smelly desire to be invited 
 To any sensual feast with thee alone: 
 But my five wits nor. my five senses can 
 Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee. 
 
 . In Sonnet 151, on the other hand, he asserts 
 that it Is his " gross body " which " betrays his 
 nobler part "; his body It Is which forces his soul 
 to look on her as his " triumphant prize." At 
 first sight here Is blank contradiction on which 
 
 281 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 the professors might chew for ever; yet it is all 
 simple enough really. He wants to tell her in the 
 earlier sonnet that in spite of her faults, he adores 
 her, that though sensually she is not perfect to 
 him, still in some mysterious inexplicable way she 
 appeals to him intensely. He desires her very 
 imperfections more than perfection itself. He 
 has known more cunning mistresses, women better 
 versed in the subtle arts of love; but still he pre- 
 fers her, and the second sonnet in its unrestrained 
 sensuality only re-affirms this view. 
 
 There is just a fragment of evidence as to his 
 mistress's shortcomings as a lover which I have 
 not yet used and which I must introduce here, for 
 it shows I am right in my reading of these appar- 
 ently contradictory sonnets. In 1599, ^ miscel- 
 laneous collection of sonnets and poems was 
 published under the title of " The Passionate Pil- 
 grime by W. Shakespeare." Some of these son- 
 nets and poems are Shakespeare's; some belong 
 just as certainly to others, but there are two which 
 are not positively attributed to him, which are his, 
 Nos. 7 and 12. The twelfth deals with the dif- 
 ference between youth and age and does not con- 
 cern us here : the seventh appears to be a poem 
 written about his mistress in the early days of 
 their love-making. It is a realistic snapshot of 
 
 %%% 
 
A Last Word 
 
 her, almost as complete as the harsh photograph 
 of Rosaline In Love's Labour's Lost. The verses 
 were probably written somewhat later than the 
 play; for we find in them the Mary Fitton of com- 
 plete intimacy, the cajoling, wheedling, emotional 
 wanton afterwards revealed in Cleopatra. Every 
 verse is astonishing in portraiture, and the last 
 line's a revelation: 
 
 Fair is my love^ but not so fair as fickle, 
 Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty, 
 Brighter than glass and yet, as glass is brittle; 
 Softer than wax and yet as iron rusty: 
 A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her, 
 None fairer, nor none falser to deface her. 
 
 Her lips to mine how often hath she joined. 
 Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing! 
 How many tales to please me hath she coined. 
 Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing! 
 Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings. 
 Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings. 
 
 She burn'd with love, as straw with fire flameth; 
 She burn'd out love, as soon as straw out-burneth; 
 She framed the love,'^nd yet she foil'd the framing; 
 She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning. 
 
 Was this a lover, or a lecher whether? 
 
 Bad in the best, though excellent in neither. 
 
 She was bad as a lover then and not excellent 
 even as a mistress. The distinction Itself goes to 
 prove that Shakespeare had already had a good 
 deal of experience. 
 
 283 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 But loving her with this Intensity, why was he 
 unable to hold her? It Is true she had been loose 
 before she met Shakespeare, and a *' wanton " 
 who win be *' rigglsh " Is much more difficult to 
 keep loyal than a maiden. But mere sensuality Is 
 not enough to explain why his love was faithless 
 to Shakespeare; Shakespeare should have been 
 able, we feel, to hold any woman In spite of va- 
 grant desires. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that the first reason of 
 her Infidelity was his own unfaith. True, he Is 
 always asserting his devoted love and perfect con- 
 stancy as In Troilus; but the Trojan youth protests 
 too absolutely; he makes one suspicious. If we 
 know anything about Shakespeare at all, we know 
 that he was always a loose liver. It is curious, 
 too, that he never suggests the man's prior fault 
 as excusing or explaining a mistress's slips. For 
 example, Cleopatra Is excessively jealous; when 
 she flirts with Thyreus and Antony accuses her, 
 why does she not retort, "And you? Did you 
 not marry Octavia in spite of your promises to 
 keep faithful to me? " But not a hint do we get 
 of the retort that would naturally spring first of 
 all to any woman's lips. The Galahad-like, ex- 
 travagant protestations of Troilus, and this un- 
 natural reticence of Cleopatra's jealousy, where 
 
 284 
 
A Last Word 
 
 reproach would be both natural and justified, con- 
 firm my suspicions. Mary Fitton was probably 
 as true to Shakespeare as he deserved, and if she 
 were the first to play false with Lord William 
 Herbert, it was at the very beginning of their in- 
 timacy before she knew much about Shakespeare, 
 and when his attitude towards women was, as we 
 have seen, very light, very confident, not to say 
 contemptuous ; calculated, that is, to inspire a 
 proud and passionate woman with distrust. 
 
 Let me first answer the chief questions that sug- 
 gest themselves, and then reconstruct the story 
 and see whether it fits in with what we know and 
 is in Itself convincing. First of all, did his gypsy- 
 wanton really love Shakespeare? She gave her- 
 self to him, we know, with utter abandonment, 
 and certainly taught him all the phases of jealous 
 passion so that he was able to reproduce them 
 afterwards with miraculous assurance in Cleo- 
 patra. I am inclined to think from the assertions 
 of Enobarbus that Mary Fitton had more of " the 
 finest part of pure love " in her than Shakespeare. 
 
 But if they both loved passionately, why didn't 
 the ardent desire wear itself out quickly? How 
 came the madding fever to last for over a dozen 
 years? The explanation Is to be found in the 
 circumstances of the lovers. The two were far 
 
 285 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 apart. Mary Fitton was held to the court, and 
 Shakespeare to his theatre. And in their separa- 
 tion both were continually tempted; the flood of 
 desire was thwarted and hemmed and turned 
 awry by all sorts of obstacles. 
 
 Why did Shakespeare take his mistrees's slips 
 so bitterly to heart? He must have known that 
 the flesh is faithless in women as in men, and al- 
 most as quick to thrill to the allurement of change 
 and the temptation of novelty. We feel that he 
 should either have had resolution enough to con- 
 quer his mistress gradually, and win her to loy- 
 alty by ineffable tenderness, or he should have ac- 
 cepted her for what she was and thanked her for 
 what she gave. 
 
 Could he at any time have won her completely? 
 Everyone will answer this question according to 
 his own experience. But let us take upon us 
 the mystery of things for once, and be as God's 
 spies and discover the heart of the secret. Had 
 Shakespeare, instead of telling Mary Fitton how 
 he desired her, told her how beautiful she was; 
 had he given her tenderness as well as passion, 
 and honeyed flatteries rather than jealous re- 
 proaches, he might have kept her true to the end. 
 It was just his weakness, his terrible greedy sen- 
 suality, that blinded him and prevented him using 
 
 286 
 
A Last Word 
 
 his attaching soul-subduing qualities. This once 
 Shakespeare was as human-foolish as the rest of 
 us. He tells us in Troilus and Cressida that love 
 and wisdom don't house together: 
 
 . . . To be wise and love 
 Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above. 
 
 He desired Mary Fitton too madly to be master 
 of his resources and play the game; he did not 
 love her unselfishly enough to win her or lightly 
 enough to accept her infidelities. 
 
 Let me now run over the incidents of the story. 
 Shakespeare seems to have stepped into the prim- 
 rose path very heedlessly. From a dozen dramas 
 we know that his love kept him at a distance at 
 first; Leontes-Shakespeare says that Hermione 
 kept him off '' three crabbed months," and this 
 was possibly about the period. 
 
 He could probably only see her when she came 
 to the theatre. She gave herself to him easily, 
 never dreaming that he was capable of a death- 
 less passion, never thinking of a lasting affection 
 between herself and this older married man. 
 Naturally she did not realize his worth, his ex- 
 traordinary genius; her ignorance nettled his 
 vanity, and in the hope of soothing it and misled 
 by snobbishness he foolishly sent Lord Herbert 
 to her. 
 
 287 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 She fell In love with Herbert, who was of her 
 own class and age and who was made up to, as 
 we know from The Lover's Complaint, by all 
 the court ladles as the very flower of aristo- 
 cratic fashion. She won him, but soon had to 
 recognize his utter unworthiness. Later she took 
 up with Shakespeare again, and they tasted all 
 the sweets of love together. But his ticklish 
 vanity had been wounded by her preference for 
 Herbert, and his high ethical conscience con- 
 demned her looseness. Probably, too, her fail- 
 ure to appreciate him at his true value kept a cer- 
 tain contempt of her alive In him. Then, too, it 
 was difficult to meet her as often as he would have 
 wished, and he made these difficulties a grief 
 against her. 
 
 At length, partly out of anger, partly out of 
 contempt of her, partly out of wounded vanity, 
 partly because he was very sensual, he betrayed 
 her with some Mrs. Daventry, the Oxford Inn- 
 keeper's wife, or other beauty. No doubt Mary 
 Fitton heard of It. London was a small place In 
 those days, and the courts and theatres were 
 whispering galleries of scandal, and naturally 
 her '' foul pride " at once Incited her to better 
 his teaching. Then his jealousy flamed Into hat- 
 ing and contemptuous-bitter reproaches as he 
 
 288 
 
A Last Word 
 
 shows us in Hamlet. Afterwards, reconcilia- 
 tions took place, and all anger was drowned in 
 days of delighted abandonment; we can hear his 
 heart throbbing heavily in Othello and in Troilus 
 and In Antony, and so the wild passion stormed 
 along for a dozen years, now in heaven, now in 
 hell, till Mary Fitton married for the second time 
 in 1608, and left the court and Shakespeare never 
 to return. 
 
 I have told how Shakespeare crept home to 
 Stratford a broken man and how in his native air 
 he was nursed back to life again by his daughter 
 Judith. As soon as he recovered some slight 
 measure of strength, thoughts of his fascinating 
 mistress returned to him, and his jealous rage be- 
 gan to torment him again. At length, warned 
 probably by Increasing weakness, he pulled him- 
 self together for a final effort, and wrote The 
 Tempest. 
 
 As we have seen, the whole of Shakespeare's 
 ^ mature work is coloured, inspired, indeed, by his 
 love of Mary Fitton; all his great tragedies are 
 steeped In his Insensate passion for his gypsy- 
 mistress. Without her he would never have 
 written Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Timon, or 
 Lear, nor pictured his Cleopatra. Had she been 
 less wilful-wanton, he might have been happier 
 
 289 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 perhaps; but he would never have reached such 
 self-knowledge or attained such fame. Mary 
 Fitton did not lead Shakespeare to the " heart of 
 loss,'^ as his Antony cried, but to the Holy of 
 Holies of Fame's Temple. Yet Shakespeare* 
 
 * All the critics, headed by Tennyson and Emerson, give this 
 magnificent passage to Fletcher; the masters because there 
 are weak passages in the scene, the critics because forsooth 
 there is often an extra syllable at the end of the verse. They 
 are all mistaken. They might as well give the great soliloquy 
 in liamlet to Fletcher. There is nothing of this quality in 
 all Fletcher's writings. Every word of it is pure Shakespeare, 
 and every word of it can be matched in his other work. The. 
 equivalent of the first lines can be found in Antony and Cleq^ 
 *paira, Act IV, scene xii. 
 
 /* she, Eros, has 
 
 / Pack'd cards with Caesar, and false play'd my glory 
 I Unto an enemy's triumph 
 
 The splendid simile: 
 
 f " No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours " 
 
 we have already admired in Sonnet 132 when Shakespeare 
 compares his mistress's eyes to that 
 
 " full star that ushers in the even." 
 
 " Gild " every reader of the sonnets knows is a favourite 
 word of the master-poet and " the noble troops that waited 
 upon my smiles " we have already met in Shakespeare-Mac- 
 beth's longing for " troops of friends." Weak endings or 
 strong, only one man has ever lived in England who could 
 write such poetry. 
 
 290 
 
A Last Word 
 
 repeats and emphasizes his accusation against 
 
 her in Henry FIJI, His Wolsey says : 
 
 .... all my glories 
 In that one woman I have lost for ever: 
 No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours, ^^-"^" 
 
 Or gild again the noble troops that waited 
 Upon my smiles. . . . 
 
 What does Shakespeare mean? It is his most 
 intimate sincerest utterance ; his poetry even never 
 reaches higher pitch on this theme. We must 
 weigh each word then in fine balances. 
 
 First of all, why this plural, "glories?" 
 Shakespeare we know had lost Lord William 
 Herbert through Mary Fitton, and he had hoped 
 great things from him. The young lord, no 
 doubt had praised him enthusiastically and prom- 
 ised as soon as he himself came to power to get 
 the poet a place under government — a place in 
 which his extraordinary qualities might have a 
 fair field. 
 
 Shakespeare, as we have already noticed, 
 hinted at something like this in The Tempest. 
 The hope of high position explains to me his ex- 
 traordinary subservience to Herbert in the Son- 
 nets, and the extravagant way he afterwards in 
 play after play blamed his ingratitude. It would 
 need a volume to collect all my reasons for this 
 view. My readers must not think I put it forth 
 
 291 
 
The ffomen of Shakespeare 
 
 hastily or without due thought. But prove it 
 completely I cannot here or perhaps anywhere. 
 
 In fine I think Shakespeare means to tell us 
 that all his highest ambitions foundered in the 
 loss of Herbert's friendship, and he lost Herbert 
 through Mary Fitton. 
 
 . . all my glories 
 In that one woman I have lost for ever . . . 
 
 He means further that he had spent the best 
 twelve years of his life in the earthy-coarse ser- 
 vice of his imperious mistress, just as Ariel, " the 
 shaping spirit of his imagination ", had passed 
 twelve years in the service of Sycorax, the foul 
 witch. Blinded by his English dislike of " lan- 
 guishing love " and his English condemnation of 
 lust, Shakespeare does not see, or wnll not see, 
 that it was just his intense passion for his mis- 
 tress that gave soul to his greatest works; in other 
 words, that he owes the better half of his glory 
 to the mistress he reviles and condemns. He does 
 not see either, or will not see, that the woman a 
 man loves with such passion must be his ideal, 
 must correspond most intimately to all his de- 
 sires — conscious and unconscious — as coin to die; 
 she is his complement; and to condemn her is self- 
 condemnation. 
 
 292 
 
 I 
 
A Last Word 
 
 But was Mary Fitton then Shakespeare's 
 equal ? Is the question which will spring to almost 
 every lip. Certainly, In Love's lists, Is the only 
 possible reply. To him she was marvellously 
 beautiful, her figure even more enchanting than 
 her face: he talks of "glorious casket" In Per- 
 icles and In Twelfth Night confesses 
 
 . . . 'tis that miracle and queen of gems 
 That nature pranks her in attracts my soul." 
 
 When at his best, as In Antony and Cleopatra, 
 Shakespeare himself recognized and acknowl- 
 edged that his proud gypsy was at least his peer. 
 Again and again In that marvellous love-duet 
 he Insists on the Incomparable qualities of " the 
 queen of love." It is Enobarbus, the spirit of 
 truth, who says: 
 
 Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety: other women cloy 
 The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 
 Where most she satisfies : for vilest things 
 Become themselves in her . . . 
 
 Again and again Shakespeare makes her equal 
 to himself: 
 
 No grave upon the earth shall clip in it 
 A pair so famous . . . 
 
 293 
 
The Women oj Shakespeare 
 
 One might even push conjecture further and 
 find a vague analogy In science. Every chemical 
 element has an atomic weight according to which 
 it unites with other elements. Each of these ele- 
 ments Is negatively electric, we are told, to the 
 element above it in the tables, and positively elec- 
 tric to the one below. Mary_FItton_was so 
 strong that she seems to have been the positive 
 or masculine element and Shakespeare so gentle- 
 sensitive that he was the feminine element in the 
 strange union. The^qul jias not always the sex 
 of the body. 
 
 But__this may rightly be called guesswoijc. 
 What we know from Antony and Cleopatra is 
 that Shakespeare came very near complete pos- 
 session of his proud, passionate, witty mistress. — 
 
 A little less and what worlds away. 
 
 His partial failure was the tragedy of his life: 
 the throbbing hours of possession his heritage of 
 joy. 
 
 Before parting with Shakespeare after these 
 twenty-five years of loving Intimacy, I must clear 
 him from one reproach, for It Is brought against 
 him by his own kin. Emerson finds high words 
 with which to praise him; he calls him " master 
 
 294 
 
A Last Word 
 
 of the revels to mankind," admits that the fore- 
 most people of the world are now for some ages 
 to be nourished " on his thoughts," their minds 
 are '* to receive his bias " ; but at the same time 
 he wonders regretfully that Shakespeare should 
 not have been "wise for himself" . . .; that 
 " the best poet led an obscure and profane life, 
 using his genius for the public amusement." 
 And In order that the dullest should be In no 
 doubt as to his meaning Emerson adds that 
 " the world still wants Its poet-priest, Its recon- 
 ciler." . . . 
 
 Now and again In the course of these studies 
 I have drawn attention to this side of Shake- 
 speare's activity — a side not, I think, sufficiently 
 realized or Indeed understood by Emerson. It 
 was hardly to be supposed that any Englishman 
 of high genius would be found wanting In the 
 priestly art. As a matter of fact, Shakespeare 
 was far more of the priest than the profane 
 player or playwright: he was not only pro- 
 foundly religious; but he has given In his plays 
 more thought and labour to defining both his 
 faith and practice than any other world-poet, 
 more even than Dante. The conclusions which 
 he favoured may not please a Puritan of the Pu- 
 ritans who came three centuries later; but they 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 will, I believe, be found In another three cen- 
 turies to have worn even better than Emerson's; 
 for Shakespeare's mind swings In a wider orbit. 
 Let me try just to state what Shakespeare 
 thought and felt about the most Important and 
 enduring relations of man. Strange to say, 
 Shakespeare was more of a Christian than Emer- 
 son himself. Trying to define the method and 
 secret of Jesus, Matthew Arnold declares that 
 repentance was the method, and the secret, In- 
 ward happiness or peace. Shakespeare would 
 have accepted at least half this teaching. As 
 early In his life as The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona (Act V, Scene 4), and as late as The 
 Tempest (Act V, Scene i), he preaches repent- 
 ance. Here are the passages: 
 
 Who by repentance is not satisfied 
 
 Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased. 
 
 By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased: 
 
 And again fifteen years later: 
 
 . . . the rarer action is 
 In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent. 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 Not a frown further. . . . 
 
 Emerson would not have accepted this first 
 article of the Christian faith: for Emerson 
 
 296 
 
A Last JVord 
 
 disliked repentance as much as his teacher 
 Goethe. 
 
 But though Shakespeare believed in repentance 
 as earnestly as any Christian Father, he never 
 goes on to promise, with Matthew Arnold, that 
 repentance will bring peace, much less inward 
 happiness. Shakespeare seems to have regarded 
 repentance as natural to the sinner, godly re- 
 pentance, too, as a Puritan would say, that is 
 repentance, " and a clear life ensuing." 
 
 In another way Shakespeare, starting with re- 
 pentance, goes further than Matthew Arnold. 
 Again and again he insists that after repentance 
 forgiveness is obligatory; he will not use " a 
 frown further." Towards the end of his life he 
 pushed this creed to its ultimate: Cymhellne 
 dates probably from 1610-11: It ends In recon- 
 ciliation, just as The Winter's Tale and The 
 Tempest end, in defiance of dramatic require- 
 ments, Shakespeare having some desire appar- 
 ently to be what Emerson wanted — a '' recon- 
 ciler " ! 
 
 The climax of the play Is centred in lachimo's 
 repentance. In his latter days Shakespeare had 
 no vision of a character to whom repentance 
 would be impossible. lachimo then (Act V, 
 Scene 5) Is forced to his knees by his "heavy 
 
 297 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 conscience," and this is how Shakespeare-Post- 
 humus treats him: 
 
 . . . Kneel not to me: 
 The power that I have on you is to spare you; 
 The malice towards you to forgive you: live 
 And deal with others better. . . . 
 
 Curiously enough, Shakespeare does not end 
 with this word of his alter ego Posthumus. 
 Again and again, as we have seen, he has used 
 Cymbeline the king as his masque, and now he 
 gives Cymbeline the final judgment: 
 
 Cym. . . . Nobly doom'd ! 
 
 We'll learn our freeness of a son-in-law; 
 Pardon's the word to all. . . . 
 
 At the risk of being again accused of pushing 
 conjecture to absurd lengths, I must confess that 
 this passage seems to me expressly used by 
 Shakespeare to praise his son-in-law Dr. Hall, 
 whose piety was traditional. Hall probably in 
 talk had said something about universal forgive- 
 ness, and Shakespeare wished to give him credit 
 for It, and then found the finest word for his 
 own belief: 
 
 Pardon's the word to all. 
 
 At his best moments Shakespeare, I think, 
 felt clearly enough that no man is responsible 
 
 298 
 
A Last Word 
 
 for his actions any more than he Is responsible 
 for his face: free-will even to the casuist must 
 be narrowly limited. In any case this is his su- 
 preme word on human justice : 
 
 Pardon's the word to all. . . . 
 
 The very form of the phrase Is as characteristic 
 as the thought: it reminds me of Hamlet's 
 " The rest is silence." 
 
 The last years of his life spent In the company 
 of his pious daughter and son-in-law seem to have 
 Influenced Shakespeare profoundly. Though he 
 had probably passed only a year or so In Strat- 
 ford when he wrote The Tempest, It Is plain al- 
 ready that he has been affected by the fervent 
 faith of his relatives. In the Epilogue to The 
 Tempest he shows for the first time a belief In 
 prayer or at least a willingness to use It and a 
 recognition of a personal deity. The words are : 
 
 And my ending is despair, 
 Unless I be relieved by prayer. 
 Which pierces so that it assaults 
 Mercy itself and frees all faults, . . . 
 
 These words show that at the last, when stand- 
 ing within the shadow, Shakespeare was very 
 close Indeed to the Christian attitude. 
 
 But If our gentle poet believed In repentance 
 299 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 and prayer as fully as the devout Christian be- 
 lieves in them, and carried the duty to forgive- 
 ness, too, as far as St. Francis himself would 
 have carried it, it must be admitted that there 
 his Christianity ends. Posthumus takes pains to 
 assure us that he does not believe in any personal 
 life after death. He says to the Gaoler: 
 
 I tell thee, fellow, there are none want eyes to direct 
 them the way I am going, but such as wink and will not 
 use them. 
 
 And the First Gaoler in Shakespeare's own voice 
 affirms the meaning in his answer: 
 
 What an infinite mock is this, that a man should have 
 the best use of eyes to see the way of blindness. . . . 
 
 To Shakespeare as to Emerson, the end of life 
 is annihilation so far as personal identity is con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Yet just as Shakespeare was more of a Chris- 
 tian than Emerson, more convinced of the efficacy 
 of repentance, of the need of prayer, of the joy 
 of forgiveness, so he was more of a pagan in 
 morals, or at least more tolerant. Emerson finds 
 Rabelais' love of filth disgusting: he likens him 
 to some dirty boy who writes obscene words in a 
 public place on the sly and runs away to escape 
 punishment. 
 
 300 
 
A Last Word 
 
 But Shakespeare, like Jesus, had infinite toler- 
 ance for the sins of the flesh: the greatest of 
 ethical teachers said, " Much shall be forgiven 
 her, for she loved much," and Shakespeare 
 through the old Countess of Rousillon insists 
 that desire and youth are inseparable. He might 
 have gone further, one feels, and justified what 
 is at once natural and beautiful. Here are the 
 words which I have shown elsewhere are to be 
 taken as his words : 
 
 . . . this thorn 
 Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong; 
 
 Our blood to us, this to our blood is born; 
 It is the show and seal of nature's truth^ 
 Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth: . . . 
 
 Now if one considers the perfect tolerance of 
 these passages and then puts side by side the say- 
 ing of Jesus : 
 
 Let him that is without sin among you east the first stone 
 
 and Shakespeare's : 
 
 Pardon's the word to all . . ., 
 
 it becomes clear that Shakespeare must have 
 been very like Jesus. Curious to me it is and in- 
 finitely touching that both were continually called 
 " gentle " : curious, too, that Shakespeare, coming 
 sixteen centuries later, and having shed off the 
 
The Women of Shakespeare 
 
 superstitious belief in a life after death, should 
 still hold practically the same faith; the two 
 greatest men of whom time has any record in 
 perfect agreement on the essentials of faith and 
 practice. 
 
 It seems to me infinitely characteristic that 
 whereas the George Eliots and Emersons and 
 all the Puritans cling to the childish morality of 
 Pauline Christianity and discard as useless the 
 intense religious emotion, the forgiveness and 
 sympathy and pity — the true piety which Jesus 
 brought to men in His Gospel of Glad Tidings, 
 Shakespeare with a finer instinct discards the 
 puerile morality while keeping the sacred emo- 
 tion. 
 
 Let me go further still: there is one passage in 
 Shakespeare that sings itself in my ears — a couple 
 of lines fraught with the rarest spirit-beauty, 
 throbbing, too, with personal feeling — it is in 
 Richard II.: Shakespeare, speaking casually of a 
 bishop who died and was buried in Venice, says 
 he gave 
 
 His body to that pleasant country's earth 
 And his pure soul unto his captain Christ. . . . 
 
 Here we have gentle Shakespeare speaking with 
 the very accent of Jesus : nothing in the Imitation, 
 
 302 
 
A Last Word 
 
 nothing of St. Francis seems to me to breathe the 
 very spirit of the Master so sweetly as this — 
 
 . . . and there at Venice gave^ 
 His body to that pleasant country's earth 
 And his pure soul unto his captain Christ. . . . 
 
 After abusing me for making Shakespeare too 
 passionate-sensual, the critics are now beginning 
 to complain that I have made him too saintly. 
 The extremes of his genius offend their undue 
 love of mediocrity: they would do better to con- 
 sider whether this angelic temper and sweet- 
 thoughted aspiration are not the natural accom- 
 paniment, perhaps even an inevitable outgrowth, 
 of that passionate sensuality they so detest and 
 despise — the strong root and scented flower of 
 the divine nectary whose name is Love. 
 
 S09 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbess, 33, 34, 149, 211. 
 
 Achilles, 199. 
 
 Adonis, 122, 206. 
 
 Adriana, XI, 22, 23, Q6, 27, 29, 
 
 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 43, 44, 
 
 51, 149, 211. 
 Agincourt, 238. 
 Agrippa, 222. 
 
 Ajax, XVII, 103, 199, 200, 201. 
 Albany, 182. 
 Alcibiades, 188. 
 Alexander, 200. 
 All's Well that Ends Well, 53, 
 
 65, 83, 134, 149, 150, 151, 
 
 212, 276. 
 Andromache, 199. 
 Anne, 36, 37, 38, 51, 52, 59. 
 Antigone, 67. 
 Antiochus, 252. 
 Antipholus, 26, 32, 34. 
 Antonio, 256. 
 Antony, X, 13, 14, 214, 216, 
 
 217, 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 
 
 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 
 
 233, 235, 284, 288. 
 Antony and Cleopatra, XV, 
 
 13, 158, 161, 196, 198, 214, 
 
 215, 224, 225, 247, 292. 
 Apemantus, 187. 
 Arden, Mary, 246. 
 Argus, XVII, 98, 201. 
 Ariel, 270, 272, 292. 
 Aristophanes, 138. 
 Aristotle, 234. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 240. 296, 
 
 297. 
 
 Arthur, 43, 44, 46, 47, 66. 
 As You Like It, 89, 91, 99. 
 Aufidius, 240, 241. 
 Austria, 44, 45. 
 Autolycus, 262. 
 
 Balfour of Burleigh, I. 
 
 Balzac, I. 
 
 Bandello, 69. 
 
 Bankside, 52, 54. 
 
 Bardolph, 53. 
 
 Bassanio, 61, 98, 142, 205. 
 
 Bastard, 70. 
 
 Beatrice, XI, 85, 86, 89, 115, 
 163, 164,^ 197, 260,. 205. 
 
 Benedick, 85, 87, 118. 
 
 Bennett, Arnold, 133. 
 
 Benvolio, 69, 74, 75. 
 
 Bertram, 65, 135, 136, 140, 
 142, 143, 144, 146, 152, 153, 
 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 
 193, 195, 234, 279. 
 
 Bernard Shaw, 66. 
 
 Bianca, 39. 
 
 Biron, 70, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 
 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 
 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 
 112, 113, 120, 139, 148, 160, 
 195, 212. 
 
 Blanch (King John), 49. 
 
 Bottom, II, 56, 66. 
 
 Boult, 251, 257, 258, 259. 
 
 Boyet, 102. 
 
 Brandes, Dr., 145. 
 
 Brawne, Fanny, 196. 
 
 Briareus, XVII, 201. 
 
 305 
 
Index 
 
 Brooke, Arthur, 69, 70. 
 Browninpr, XVII. 
 Brutus, 166, 203, 234, 240. 
 Byron, 2. 
 
 Cade, Jack, 22. 
 
 Caesar, 158, 217, 219, 222, 223, 
 
 225, 228, 232, 233, 234, 235, 
 
 290. 
 Caius Marcius, 241. 
 Caleb Balderstone, I. 
 Caliban, 272. 
 Capulet, 75. 
 Carlyle, 273. 
 Cassandra, 203. 
 Cassio, 174, 175. 
 Cervantes, 21. 
 Chamberlain, Mr., 267. 
 Chapman, XVII, 199, 200. 
 Charmian, 228. 
 Chettle, 49. 
 Clarendon, 153. 
 Claudio, 85. 
 Cleopatra, XI, 14, 155, 214, 
 
 216, 217, 218, 221, 222, 223, 
 
 224, 225, 226, 231, 232, 233, 
 
 234, 235, 247, 265, 278, 282, 
 
 284, 285. 
 Coleridffe, XVIII, 2, 6, 7, 9, 
 
 11, 36, 134, 135, 137, 251, 
 
 256. 
 Comechi of Errors, The, XI, 
 
 22, 26, 49, 52, 149, 211. 
 Condell, 8. 
 Constance, XI, 43, 44, 46, 47, 
 
 66. 
 Coriolanus, XII, 237, 238, 239, 
 
 240, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246. 
 Cordelia, 164. 
 Costard, 96. 
 Creon, 67. 
 « Cressid," XI, 208. 
 Cressida, 155, 157, 202, 203, 
 
 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 
 
 211, 212, 213, 223, 232, 265. 
 Cromwell, XIV. 
 
 Cupid, 75, 87, 95. 
 Cymheline, 259 263 264, 265, 
 269, 299. 
 
 Dame Quickly, 53, 68. 
 Dante, XVII, 115, 137, 162, 
 
 163, 213, 280, 296. 
 Dauphin, 18. 
 Daventry, Mrs., 288. 
 Dekker, 200, 201, 202. 
 Demetrius, 1^5, 58. 
 Desdemona, 20, 164, 165, 174, 
 
 175, 176, 177, 178, 265. 
 Dian, 74, 116. 
 Diana, 75, 154, 193. 
 Diomedes, 209, 210, 213. 
 Doll Tearsheet, 68. 
 Don Pedro, 87. 
 Dowden, Professor, 145. 
 Drake, 239. 
 
 Dromio of Ephesus, 29. 
 Duchess of York, 39. 
 Duncan, 180. 
 
 Edgar, 183, 184, 251. 
 Edmund, 182, 183. 
 Edward, 16, 37. 
 Elinor (King John), 44, 49. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 238. 
 Emerson, 147, 289, 295, 296, 
 
 297, 299, 300. 
 Enalish Review, The, 276. 
 Enbbarbus, 218, 220, 226, 227, 
 
 228, 229, 285, 292. 
 Eros, 220, 221, 290. 
 Essex, 54. 
 Eversley Edition, 6, 141. 
 
 Faerie Queen, The, 6. 
 Falstaif, 22, 53, 68, 76, 104, 
 
 258. 
 Faust, 271, 272. 
 Ferdinand, 264, 270, 274. 
 First Gaoler {Cymheline), 
 
 300. 
 
 S06 
 
Index 
 
 First Part of King Henry 
 VI., 7, 8, 9, 13, 22, 23, 37, 
 38, 52, 53. 
 
 First Lord {All's Well that 
 Ends Well), 159. 
 
 First Senator (Timon), 189. 
 
 Fitton, Mary, XI, XII, XIII, 
 72, 74, 75,* 76, 77, 79, 85, 86, 
 88, 89, 91, 92, 98, 100, 104, 
 106, 107, 109, 114, 115, 120, 
 121, 125, 127, 129, 130, 131 
 132, 134, 135, 138, 143, 149, 
 151, 154, 155, 157, 158, 164, 
 165, 168, 176, 177, ^,78, 193, 
 194, 195, 218, 219,/220, 222, 
 223, 228, 231, 234, 235, 247, 
 249, 255, 260, 267, 269, 276, 
 280, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 
 289, 291, 292, 293. 
 
 Flavius, 160. 
 
 Fletcher, 137, 289, 290. 
 
 Florizel, ^^62. 
 
 Fra Angelico, 21. 
 
 Francesca, 2, 68, 137. 
 
 Fulvia, 225, 226. 
 
 Glaucus and Silla, 6. 
 Gloucester, 36, 59, 184. 
 Goethe, 2, 21, 68, 163, 271, 272, 
 
 277. 
 Goneril, XI, 182, 183, 190. 
 Gratiano, 61, 70, 81. 
 Gretchen, 2, 68. 
 Greene, 53. 
 Guildenstern, 159, 160, 172. 
 
 Hall, Dr., 299. 
 
 Hamlet, X, XIV, 107, 150, 
 
 151, 165, 166, 173, 174, 181, 
 197, 198, 266, 287. 
 
 Hamlet, 76, 80, 107, 138, 159, 
 
 160, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 
 
 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 185, 
 
 214, 215, 218, 234, 236, 254, 
 
 255, 256, 261, 263, 266, 268, 
 290. 
 
 Hamnet, 42, 49, 262. 
 
 Harry V., 176. 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel, 5. 
 
 Hathaway, Ann, 25, 30, 50. 
 
 Hector, 198. 
 
 Heine, 145. 
 
 Helen, 203. 
 
 Helena, 55, 56, 58, 65, 83, 135, 
 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 
 143, 144, 145, 145, 147, 149, 
 151, 152, 153, 156. 
 
 Hemyng, 8. 
 
 Henry V., 258. 
 
 Henry VII., XIV. 
 
 Henry VIII., 259, 290. 
 
 Hero and Leander, 4. 
 
 Hero, 85. 
 
 Herford, Profesor, 6, 9, 10, 
 57, 141, 165, 188, 251, 257. 
 
 Hermia, 55, 5Q, 58. 
 
 Herbert, Lord William, 101, 
 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 
 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 
 135, 137, 143, 146, 154, 155, 
 157, 158, 171, 172, 178, 193, 
 194, 200, 233, 267, 268, 284, 
 287, 291. 
 
 Hermione, 260, 287. 
 
 Hesperus, 140. 
 
 Holinshed, 17, 36, 239. 
 
 Homer, 137, 199, 200. 
 
 Horace, 5. 
 
 Hortensio, 40. 
 
 Hotspur, 70, 164, 176. 
 
 Hubert, 46. 
 
 Hyperion, 169. 
 
 lachimo, 266, 268, 298. 
 lago, 177, 277. 
 Imogen, 2, 177, 263, 264. 
 Iras, 233. 
 
 Jaques, ^5Q. 
 
 Joan of Arc, 10, 11, 16, 17, 
 
 18, 19, 21, 22, 51, 241. 
 Johnson, Dr., 146, 152, 156. 
 
 S07 
 
Index 
 
 Jonson, Ben, XVIT, 49, 50, 
 
 200, 201, 25T, 278. 
 
 Judith, XII, 249, 258, 289. 
 
 Julia, XI, 58, 59, 60, Gl, 63, 
 64, 65, 68, 71, 73, 76, 77, 78, 
 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 103, 
 115, 164, 197. 
 
 Juliet, XI, 61, 67, 68. 69, 70, 
 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 81, 
 84, 86, 103, 115, 166, 191, 
 207, 208, 250, 264, 265. 
 
 Julius Casar, 151, 152, 181, 
 203. 
 
 Katharina {Taming of the 
 Shreiv, The), XI, 39, 40, 41, 
 42, 52. 
 
 Katherine {Loire's Labour's 
 Lost), 109. 
 
 Keats, 196. 
 
 Kemp, 72, 80. 
 
 Kent, 160. 
 
 King John, XT, 42, 43, 44, 49. 
 
 King Philip, 44, 45, 46, 47. 
 
 La Comedie Humaine, I. 
 
 Laertes, 171, 173. 
 
 Lafeu, 159, 160. 
 
 Lang, Mr. Andrew, 91. 
 
 Lavina, 8. 
 
 Lear, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 
 186, 190, 197, 198, 257, 259, 
 261, 265, 266, 267, 289, 293. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 83. 
 
 Leontes, 260, 261, ^G5, 266, 
 287. 
 
 Longaville, 104. 
 
 Lover's Complaint, The, 129, 
 137, 287. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost, 22, 35, 
 51, 57, 70, 78, 79, 83, 91, 
 92, 93, 108, 109, 115, 120, 
 195, 197, 202, 213, 224, 282. 
 
 Lucetta, 53, 59, 60. 
 
 Luciana, 28, 29. 
 
 Lucrece, 5, 22. 
 
 Luther, 213. 
 Lysander, 55, 58. 
 Lysimachus, 357. 
 
 Macbeth, 80, 179, 180. 
 Macbeth, 80, 150, 151, 179, 
 
 180, 181, 198, 289, 290. 
 Macbeth, Lady, XI, 179, 180, 
 
 182. 
 Madame Bovary, 2. 
 Mamillius, 49, 261. 
 Manon Lescaut, 2. 
 Marcus Aurelius, 21, 253. 
 Mardian, 228. 
 Margaret, 10, 11, 12, 16, 22, 
 
 23, 38, 39, 91, 52. 
 Margaret (Charles Reade's), 
 
 84. 
 Marina, XII, 249, 250, 251, 
 
 257, 258, 262, 263. 
 Marlowe, 4, 53. 
 Marston, 200. 
 Martin, St., 198. 
 Measure for Measure, 107. 
 Memenius, 160. 
 Merchant of Venice, The, 57, 
 
 70, 98, 241. 
 Mercutio, 68, 70, 76, 88, 94, 
 
 98, 138. 
 Meredith, 162. 
 Michelangelo, 150, 163. 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 
 A, 53, 54, 57, 58. 
 Mignon, 2. 
 Milton, 2. 
 Miranda, XII, 249, 250, 269, 
 
 270. - 
 
 Mortimer, 13, 14, 16, 21. 
 Mtich Ado about Nothing, 87, 
 
 89, 91, 118,. 121, 133, 156, 248. 
 
 Nerissa, 59, 61. 
 Nero, 253. 
 
 Night Watch, The, 67. 
 Noble Stranger, The, 5. 
 
 308 
 
Index 
 
 Nurse {Borneo and Juliet), 
 68, 72, 85, 138, 164, 265. 
 
 Octavia, 230, 231, 233, 284. 
 Ophelia, 89, 107, 150, 164, 165, 
 
 166, 171, 172, 173. 
 Orsino, Duke, X, 165. 
 Osric 159 
 Othello, 19, 20, 165, 168, 174, 
 
 175, 176, 177, 178, 194, 288. 
 Othello, 165, 168, 174, 176, 
 
 177, 178, 179, 181, 192, 194, 
 
 197, 198, 261, 288, 289. 
 Oxford, 288. 
 
 Painter, 69. 
 
 Palace of Pleasure, The, 69. 
 
 Pandar, 202, 203, 204, 205, 
 
 206, 257. 
 Pandulph, 45. 
 Parolles, 135, 141, 153, 154, 
 
 157, 160, 212, 268, 279. 
 Passionate Pilgrim, The, 282. 
 Paul, St., IX, 160. 
 Paulina, 260, 261. 
 Pembroke, 170. 
 Perdita, XII, 2, 249, 250, 262, 
 
 263, 265. 
 Pericles, 249, 251, 252, 253, 
 
 254, 255, Q56, 257, 259, 292. 
 Petruchio, 40, 
 Phebe, 87, 88. 
 Phrynia, 108, 190. 
 Pietk of the Rodanini Palace, 
 
 150. 
 Pistol, 53, 141, 241. 
 Plutarch, 214, 215, 242. 
 Polonius, 170, 177. 
 Pompev, 217, 219. 
 Portia,' XI, 59, 61, G^, 64, 68, 
 
 73, 70, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 
 
 98, 103, 109, 115, 129, 141, 
 
 142, 151, 164, 166, 197, 250. 
 Posthumus, 14, 168, 261, QQQ, 
 
 267, 268, 298, 299. 
 Princess of France, 94. 
 
 Prospero, 251, 268, 273, 275. 
 Proteus, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 82. 
 Puck, 5Q. 
 Pupillus, 5. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, 37, 72. 
 Quickly, Dame, 68. 
 
 Rabelais, 300. 
 
 Raleigh, 239. 
 
 Rape of Lucrece, The, 5. 
 
 Raphael, 115. 
 
 Reade, Charles, 84. 
 
 Regan, 182, 183, 190. 
 
 Rembrandt, 67. 
 
 Richard (Duke of Glou- 
 cester), 36, 37, 39. 
 
 Richard II., 35, 66, 302. 
 
 Richard III., 36, 39, 51, 59, 
 179, 218, 277. 
 
 Richardson, John, 25. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 2. 
 
 Rodanini Palace, 150. 
 
 Romeo, 37, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 
 
 76, 203, 208. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, XI, 57, QQ, 
 67, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 85, 
 93, 108, 115, 120, 161, 195, 
 215 223. 
 
 Rosalind, XI, 2, 78, 79, 86, 87, 
 '88, 89, 99, 166, 197. 
 
 Rosaline, XI, 73, 74, 75, 76, 
 
 77, 78, 79, 93, 95, 98, 196, 
 197, 204. 
 
 Rosaline {Love's Labours 
 Lost), XI, 35, 88, 91, 92, 
 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 
 101, 102, 103, 104, 109, 110, 
 112, 113, 139, 166, 195, 197, 
 202, 203, 213, 224, 282. 
 
 Rosencrantz, 159, 160, 172. 
 
 Rouen, 17. 
 
 Rousillon, Countess of, 146, 
 147, 148, 149, 160, 300. 
 
 Sacred Mount, 238. 
 
 309 
 
Index 
 
 St. Francis, 302. 
 
 Salisbury, 45. 
 
 Sandells, Fulk, 25. 
 
 Scott, I. 
 
 Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The, 
 
 23. 
 Sharp, Becky, 2. 
 Shaw, Bernard, 66. 
 Silvius, 87, 88. 
 Sonnets: 
 
 23, p. 122. 
 26, p. 122. 
 33, p. 122. 
 99, p. 123. 
 
 121, p. 17. 
 
 127, p. 99, 104, 106. 
 
 130, p. 105, ]23, 
 
 132, p. 290. 
 
 140, p. 101, 126. 
 
 144, p. 131. 
 
 147, p. 126. 
 
 148, p. 104, 106. 
 
 150, p. 105, 127, 179, 226. 
 
 151, p. 127. 
 
 152, p. 128. 
 Sophocles, 67, 137, 138. 
 Southampton, 54. 
 Spencer, 138. 
 
 Stratford, XII, 7, 42, 43, 248, 
 
 289. 
 Suffolk, 10, 11, 12, 16, 23, 25, 
 
 37, 51. 
 Swinburne, 4, 10, 11, 13, 14, 19, 
 
 146, 251, 252, 256. 
 Sycorax, 292. 
 Sylvia, 58, 62, 63, 64. 
 
 Talbot, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, The, 
 XI, 39, 51. 
 
 Tamora, 8, 22, 51, 
 
 Tearsheet, Doll, 68, 258. 
 
 Tempest, The, XTI, XV, 248, 
 259, 264, 269, 271, 272, 273, 
 289, 291, 296, 298, 299. 
 
 Temple Gardens, 9. 
 
 Tennyson, 289. 
 
 Thersites, 206, 277. 
 
 Third Part of Henry VI., 36. 
 
 Thyreus, 219, 232, 284. 
 
 Titus Andronicus, 7, 8, 22, 38. 
 
 Timandra, 108, 190. 
 
 Timon, 108, 181, 186, 187, 188, 
 
 189, 190, 191, 192, 197, 198, 
 
 200, 261, 266, 292. 
 Titania, 56, 66. 
 Tolstoi, 182. 
 Troilus, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 
 
 210, 211, 212, 213, 284, 288. 
 Troilus and Cressida, 196, 198, 
 
 199, 200, 202, 204. 
 Trojan, 211, 284. 
 Troublesome Reign of King 
 
 John, The, 43, 70. 
 Troy, 208. 
 Tioelfth Night, 65, 89, 91, 118, 
 
 165. 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
 
 39, 53, 57, 58, 65, 71, 117, 
 
 118, 121. 
 Two Noble Kinsmen, The, 9. 
 Tyler, Mr., 72, 127. 
 Tyre, 256. 
 
 Ulysses, 209, 210, 211. 
 
 Valentine, 58. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 3, 4, 5, 6, 
 
 7, 22, 74, 122, 206. 
 Virgil, 280. 
 
 Viola, 89, 140, 151, 165..^ 
 Volumnia, XII, 2437^46. 
 
 Wells, H. G., 272. 
 Whitehall, 93, 100, 120. 
 Winter's Tale, The, 49, 177, 
 
 260, 263, 298. 
 Wolsey, XIV, 290. 
 Wordsworth, 2. 
 
 Xanthippe oi Socrates, 50. 
 
 810 
 
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