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    Dark Lady of the Sonnets
    Dark Lady of the Sonnets
    Dark Lady of the Sonnets
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Dark Lady of the Sonnets

    By Bernard Shaw

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    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    Dark Lady of the Sonnets

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      Book preview

      Dark Lady of the Sonnets - Bernard Shaw

      Project Gutenberg's Dark Lady of the Sonnets, by George Bernard Shaw

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Dark Lady of the Sonnets

      Author: George Bernard Shaw

      Release Date: July 23, 2008 [EBook #1050]

      Last Updated: December 10, 2012

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS ***

      Produced by Ron Burkey, and Amy Thomte

      THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS

      By Bernard Shaw

      CONTENTS

      THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS

      PREFACE TO THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS

      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. Nature's malice was so overdone in his case that it somehow failed to produce the effect of repulsion it seemed to have aimed at. When you first met Thomas Tyler you could think of nothing else but whether surgery could really do nothing for him. But after a very brief acquaintance you never thought of his disfigurements at all, and talked to him as you might to Romeo or Lovelace; only, so many people, especially women, would not risk the preliminary ordeal, that he remained a man apart and a bachelor all his days. I am not to be frightened or prejudiced by a tumor; and I struck up a cordial acquaintance with him, in the course

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