The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 24

_Ros_. Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

_Biron_. What time o' day?

_Ros_. The hour that fools should ask.

_Biron_. 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."

Clearly this Rosaline, too, has Dian's wit and is not in love with Biron, any more than the Rosaline of "Romeo and Juliet" was in love with Romeo.

The next allusion is even more characteristic. Biron and Longaville and Boyet are talking; Longaville shows his admiration for one of the Princess's women, "the one in the white" he declares, is a most sweet lady...."

_Biron_. What is her name in the cap?

_Boyet_. Rosaline, by good hap.

_Biron_. Is she wedded or no?

_Boyet_. To her will, sir, or so.

_Biron_. You are welcome, sir: adieu."

This, "To her will, sir, or so," is exactly in the spirit of the sonnets: every one will remember the first two lines of sonnet 135:

"Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy _Will_, And _Will_ to boot, and _Will_ in overplus;"

That, "To her will, sir, or so," I find astonis.h.i.+ngly significant, for not only has it nothing to do with the play and is therefore unexpected, but the character-drawing is unexpected, too; maids are not usually wedded to their will in a double sense, and no other of these maids of honour is described at all.

A little later Biron speaks again of Rosaline in a way which shocks expectation. First of all, he rages at himself for being in love at all.

"And I, forsooth in love! I, that have been love's whip!" Here I pause again, it seems to me that Shakespeare is making confession to us, just as when he admitted without reason that Jaques was lewd. Be that as it may, he certainly goes on in words which are astounding, so utterly unforeseen are they, and therefore the more characteristic:

"Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all; And, among three, to love the worst of all;"

The first line of this couplet, that he is perjured in loving Rosaline may be taken as applying to the circ.u.mstances of the play; but Shakespeare also talks of himself in sonnet 152 as "perjured," for he only swears in order to misuse his love, or with a side glance at the fact that he is married and therefore perjured when he swears love to one not his wife. It is well to keep this "perjured" in memory.

But it is the second line which is the more astonis.h.i.+ng; there Biron tells us that among the three of the Princess's women he loves "the worst of all." Up to this moment we have only been told kindly things of Rosaline and the other ladies; we had no idea that any one of them was bad, much less that Rosaline was "the worst of all." The suspicion grows upon us, a suspicion which is confirmed immediately afterwards, that Shakespeare is speaking of himself and of a particular woman; else we should have to admit that his portraiture of Rosaline's character was artistically bad, and bad without excuse, for why should he lavish all this wealth of unpleasant detail on a mere subsidiary character? He goes on, however, to make the fault worse; he next speaks of his love Rosaline as--

"A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch-b.a.l.l.s stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and by heaven, one that will 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."

It is, of course, a blot upon the play for Biron to declare that his love is a wanton of the worst. It is not merely unexpected and uncalled-for; it diminishes our sympathy with Biron and his love, and also with the play. But we have already found the rule trustworthy that whenever Shakespeare makes a mistake in art it is because of some strong personal feeling and not for want of wit, and this rule evidently holds good here. Shakespeare-Biron is picturing the woman he himself loves; for not only does he describe her as a wanton to the detriment of the play; but he pictures her precisely, and this Rosaline is the only person in the play of whom we have any physical description at all.

Moreover, he has given such precise and repeated photographs of no other character in any of his plays:

"A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch-b.a.l.l.s stuck in her face for eyes."

This is certainly the same Rosaline we found depicted in "Romeo and Juliet"; but the portraiture here, both physical and moral, is more detailed and peculiar than it was in the earlier play. Shakespeare now knows his Rosaline intimately. The mere facts that here again her physical appearance is set forth with such particularity, and that the "hard-heartedness" which Mercutio noted in her has now become "wantonness" is all-important, especially when we remember that Miss Fitton was probably listening to the play. Even at Christmas, 1597, Shakespeare's pa.s.sion has reached the height of a s.e.x-duel. Miss Fitton has tortured him so that he delights in calling her names to her face in public when the play would have led one to expect ingratiating or complimentary courtesies. It does not weaken this argument to admit that the general audience would not perhaps have understood the allusions.

It is an almost incredible fact that not a single one of his hundreds of commentators has even noticed any peculiarity in this physical portraiture of Rosaline; Shakespeare uses this realism so rarely one would have thought that every critic would have been astounded by it; but no, they all pa.s.s over it without a word, Coleridge, Mr. Tyler, all of them.

The fourth act of "Love's Labour's Lost" begins with a most characteristic soliloquy of Biron:

"_Biron_. The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil; I am toiling in a pitch--pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word."

Here Biron is manifestly playing on the "pitch-b.a.l.l.s" his love has for eyes, and also on the "foul faults" Shakespeare speaks of in the sonnets and in Oth.e.l.lo. Biron goes on:

"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 the lady hath it: sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady!"

This proves to me that some of Shakespeare's sonnets were written in 1597. True, Mr. Tyler would try to bind all the sonnets within the three years from 1598 to 1601, the three years which Shakespeare speaks about in sonnet 104:

"Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd In process of the seasons have I seen.

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green."

Lord Herbert first came to Court in the spring of 1598, and so sonnet 104 may have represented the fact precisely so far as Herbert was concerned; but I am not minded to take the poet so literally. Instead of beginning in the spring of 1598, some of the sonnets to the lady were probably written in the autumn of 1597, or even earlier, and yet Shakespeare would be quite justified in talking of three years, if the period ended in 1601. A poet is not to be bound to an almanack's exact.i.tude.

In the fourth act of "Love's Labour's Lost," when Biron confesses his love for "the heavenly Rosaline," the King banters him in the spirit of the time:

"_King_. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.

_Biron_. Is ebony like her? O wood divine!

A 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."

Here we have Shakespeare again describing his mistress for us, though he has done it better earlier in the play; he harps upon her dark beauty here to praise it, just as he praised it in sonnet 127; it is pa.s.sion's trick to sound the extremes of blame and praise alternately.

In the time of Elizabeth it was customary for poets and courtiers to praise red hair and a fair complexion as "beauty's ensign," and so compliment the Queen. The flunkeyism, which is a characteristic of all the Germanic races, was peculiarly marked in England from the earliest times, and induced men, even in those "s.p.a.cious days," not only to overpraise fair hair, but to run down dark hair and eyes as ugly. The King replies:

"O paradox! Black is the badge of h.e.l.l, The hue of dungeons and the school of night; And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well."

Biron answers:

"Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.

O, if in black my lady's brow be deck'd It mourns that painting and usurping hair Should ravish doters with a false aspect; And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Her favour turns the fas.h.i.+on of the days, For native blood is counted painting now; And therefore red that would avoid dispraise, Paints itself black, to imitate her brow."

Our timid poet is bold enough, when cloaked under a stage-name, to uphold the colour of his love's hair against the Queen's; the mere fact speaks volumes to those who know their Shakespeare.

Sonnet 127 runs in almost the same words; though now the poet speaking in his own person is less bold:

"In the old age black was not counted fair, Or, if it were, it bore not beauty's name; But now is black beauty's successive heir, And beauty slandered with a b.a.s.t.a.r.d shame: For since each hand hath put on nature's power, Fairing the soul with art's false borrow'd face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.

Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Slandering creation with a false esteem: Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe That every tongue says beauty should look so."