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Dark Lady of the Sonnets By: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) |
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By Bernard Shaw
CONTENTS Preface
How the Play came to be Written
Thomas Tyler
Frank Harris
Harris "durch Mitleid wissend"
"Sidney's Sister: Pembroke's Mother"
Shakespear's Social Standing
This Side Idolatry
Shakespear's Pessimism
Gaiety of Genius
Jupiter and Semele
The Idol of the Bardolaters
Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion
Shakespear and Democracy
Shakespear and the British Public
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS 1910
PREFACE TO THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
How the Play came to be Written I had better explain why, in this little piece d'occasion , written
for a performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing
a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespear, I have identified the
Dark Lady with Mistress Mary Fitton. First, let me say that I do not
contend that the Dark Lady was Mary Fitton, because when the case in
Mary's favor (or against her, if you please to consider that the Dark
Lady was no better than she ought to have been) was complete, a
portrait of Mary came to light and turned out to be that of a fair
lady, not of a dark one. That settles the question, if the portrait
is authentic, which I see no reason to doubt, and the lady's hair
undyed, which is perhaps less certain. Shakespear rubbed in the
lady's complexion in his sonnets mercilessly; for in his day black
hair was as unpopular as red hair was in the early days of Queen
Victoria. Any tinge lighter than raven black must be held fatal to
the strongest claim to be the Dark Lady. And so, unless it can be
shewn that Shakespear's sonnets exasperated Mary Fitton into dyeing
her hair and getting painted in false colors, I must give up all
pretence that my play is historical. The later suggestion of Mr
Acheson that the Dark Lady, far from being a maid of honor, kept a
tavern in Oxford and was the mother of Davenant the poet, is the one I
should have adopted had I wished to be up to date. Why, then, did I
introduce the Dark Lady as Mistress Fitton? Well, I had two reasons. The play was not to have been written by me
at all, but by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton; and it was she who suggested a
scene of jealousy between Queen Elizabeth and the Dark Lady at the
expense of the unfortunate Bard. Now this, if the Dark Lady was a
maid of honor, was quite easy. If she were a tavern landlady, it
would have strained all probability. So I stuck to Mary Fitton. But
I had another and more personal reason. I was, in a manner, present
at the birth of the Fitton theory. Its parent and I had become
acquainted; and he used to consult me on obscure passages in the
sonnets, on which, as far as I can remember, I never succeeded in
throwing the faintest light, at a time when nobody else thought my
opinion, on that or any other subject, of the slightest importance. I
thought it would be friendly to immortalize him, as the silly literary
saying is, much as Shakespear immortalized Mr W. H., as he said he
would, simply by writing about him. Let me tell the story formally.
Thomas Tyler Throughout the eighties at least, and probably for some years before,
the British Museum reading room was used daily by a gentleman of such
astonishing and crushing ugliness that no one who had once seen him
could ever thereafter forget him. He was of fair complexion, rather
golden red than sandy; aged between forty five and sixty; and dressed
in frock coat and tall hat of presentable but never new appearance.
His figure was rectangular, waistless, neckless, ankleless, of middle
height, looking shortish because, though he was not particularly
stout, there was nothing slender about him. His ugliness was not
unamiable; it was accidental, external, excrescential. Attached to
his face from the left ear to the point of his chin was a monstrous
goitre, which hung down to his collar bone, and was very inadequately
balanced by a smaller one on his right eyelid... Continue reading book >>
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