“The broken bosoms that to me belong
Have emptied all their fountains in my well”:
it is impossible not to feel that it is Willie Hughes who is speaking to us. “Deep-brained sonnets,” indeed, had Shakespeare brought him, “jewels” that to his careless eyes were but as “trifles,” though—
“each several stone,
With wit well blazoned, smiled or made some moan”;
and into the well of beauty he had emptied the sweet fountain of his song. That in both places it was an actor who was alluded to, was also clear. The betrayed nymph tells us of the “false fire” in her lover's cheek, of the “forced thunder” of his sighs, and of his “borrowed motion”: of whom, indeed, but of an actor could it be said that to him “thought, characters, and words” were “merely Art,” or that—
“To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will”?
The play on words in the last line is the same as that used in the punning sonnets, and is continued
