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_ And now to return to Shakespear. Though Mr Harris followed Tyler in
identifying Mary Fitton as the Dark Lady, and the Earl of Pembroke as
the addressee of the other sonnets and the man who made love
successfully to Shakespear's mistress, he very characteristically
refuses to follow Tyler on one point, though for the life of me I
cannot remember whether it was one of the surmises which Tyler
published, or only one which he submitted to me to see what I would
say about it, just as he used to submit difficult lines from the
sonnets.
This surmise was that "Sidney's sister: Pembroke's mother" set
Shakespear on to persuade Pembroke to marry, and that this was the
explanation of those earlier sonnets which so persistently and
unnaturally urged matrimony on Mr W. H. I take this to be one of the
brightest of Tyler's ideas, because the persuasions in the sonnets are
unaccountable and out of character unless they were offered to please
somebody whom Shakespear desired to please, and who took a motherly
interest in Pembroke. There is a further temptation in the theory for
me. The most charming of all Shakespear's old women, indeed the most
charming of all his women, young or old, is the Countess of Rousillon
in All's Well That Ends Well. It has a certain individuality among
them which suggests a portrait. Mr Harris will have it that all
Shakespear's nice old women are drawn from his beloved mother; but I
see no evidence whatever that Shakespear's mother was a particularly
nice woman or that he was particularly fond of her. That she was a
simple incarnation of extravagant maternal pride like the mother of
Coriolanus in Plutarch, as Mr Harris asserts, I cannot believe: she
is quite as likely to have borne her son a grudge for becoming "one of
these harlotry players" and disgracing the Ardens. Anyhow, as a
conjectural model for the Countess of Rousillon, I prefer that one of
whom Jonson wrote
Sidney's sister: Pembroke's mother:
Death: ere thou has slain another,
Learnd and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
But Frank will not have her at any price, because his ideal Shakespear
is rather like a sailor in a melodrama; and a sailor in a melodrama
must adore his mother. I do not at all belittle such sailors. They
are the emblems of human generosity; but Shakespear was not an emblem:
he was a man and the author of Hamlet, who had no illusions about his
mother. In weak moments one almost wishes he had. _
Read next: PREFACE TO THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS: Shakespear's Social Standing
Read previous: PREFACE TO THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS: Harris "durch Mitleid wissend"
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