Part 25 (1/2)

There can be no doubt that in this Rosaline of ”Romeo and Juliet” and of ”Love's Labour's Lost,” Shakespeare is describing the ”dark lady” of the second sonnet-series, and describing her, against his custo, even more exactly than he described her in the lyrics

There is a line at the end of this act which is very characteristic when considered hat has gone before; it is clearly a confession of Shakespeare hiht call the conscience that pervades all his ues tosome stress on that ”perjured” e first met it

In the second scene of the fifth act, which opens with a talk between the Princess and her ladies, our view of Rosaline is confirht, and jests upon this in lewd fashi+on; declares, too, that she is ”aspirit,” in fact, tells her that she is

”A light condition in a beauty dark”

All these needless repetitions prove tohis ree with ive another instance in which he has used or abused the saht badinage of the girls than a description of Rosaline When Rosaline says that she will torture Biron before she goes, and turn him into her vassal, the Princess adds,

”None are so surely caught when they are catch'd As wit turned fool”

Rosaline replies,

”The blood of youth burns not with such excess As gravity's revolt to wantonness”

This re in Rosaline'sin the play, and he has never been distinguished for his gravity, but for his wit and humour: the Princess calls him ”quick Biron” The two lines are clearly Shakespeare's criticisht himself old, and certainly his years (thirty-four) contrasted badly with those of Mary Fitton as at this time not more than nineteen

Late in 1597 then, before William Herbert came upon the scene at all, Shakespeare knew that his mistress was a wanton:

”Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed; Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard”

Shakespeare has painted his love for us in these plays as a most extraordinary woman: in person she is tall, with pallid coipsy,” he calls her; in nature imperious, lawless, witty, passionate--a ”wanton”; irl of the time has been discovered who united all these qualities in herself would bring conviction to almost any mind; but belief passes into certitude e reflect that this portrait of his reatest particularity in the plays, where in fact it is out of place and a fault in art When studying the later plays we shall find this gipsy wanton again and again; she made the deepest impression on Shakespeare; was, indeed, the one love of his life It was her falseness that brought hie of life, and turned hiht-hearted writer of coedies that have ever been conceived Shakespeare owes the greater part of his renown to Mary Fitton

CHAPTER V THE SONNETS: PART III

Thequestion in the sonnets, the question the vital importance of which dwarfs all others, has never yet been fairly tackled and decided As soon as English critics noticed, a hundred years or so ago, that the sonnets fell into two series, and that the first, and longer, series was addressed to a young istered judge a cat Hallam, ”the judicious,” held that ”it would have been better for Shakespeare's reputation if the sonnets had never been written,” and even Heine, led away by the consensus of opinion, accepted the conderadation of hu ourselves to the novel enjoyment of moral superiority over Shakespeare, it uilt established?

No one, I think, who has followed me so far will need to be told that I take no interest in white-washi+ng Shakespeare: I a him as he lived and loved, and if I found him as vicious as Villon, or as cruel as a stoat, I would set it all down as faithfully as I would give proof of his generosity or his gentleness

Before the reader can fairly judge of Shakespeare's innocence or guilt, he must hold in mind two salient peculiarities of the man which I have already noted; but which must now be relieved out into due prominence so that one will make instinctive allowance for them at every moment, his sensuality and his snobbishness

His sensuality is the quality, as we have seen, which unites the creatures of his temperament with those of his intellect, his poets with his thinkers, and proves that Roht” and Hamlet, are one and the same person If the matter is fairly considered it will be found that this all-pervading sensuality is the source, or at least a natural accoentle kindness and his unrivalled sympathy

Shakespeare painted no portrait of the hero or of the adventurer; found no neord for the virile virtues or virile vices, but he gave i, to love, jealousy, and despair, to every forentler and more feminine qualities Desire in especial has inspired hiasped out by panting Sappho when lust had made her body a lyre of deathless music Her lyric to the beloved is not so intense as Othello's:

”O, thou weed Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet That the sense aches at thee”;

or as Cleopatra's astonishi+ng: