ship." Was Shakspere less a courtier of the sun than Languet or Michael Angelo?
If we accept the obvious reading of the Sonnets, we must believe that Shakspere at some time of his life was snared by a woman, the reverse of beautiful according to the conventional Elizabethan standard—dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale-cheeked (132); skilled in touching the virginal (128); skilled also in playing on the heart of man; who could attract and repel, irritate and soothe, join reproach with caress (145); a woman faithless to her vow in wedlock (152). Through her no calm of joy came to him; his life ran quicker but more troubled through her spell, and she mingled strange bitterness with its waters. Mistress of herself and of her art, she turned when it pleased her from the player to capture a more distinguished prize, his friend. For a while Shakspere was kept in the torture of doubt and suspicion; then confession and tears were offered by the youth. The wound had gone deep into Shakspere's heart:
"Love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury."
But, delivering himself from the intemperance of wrath, he could forgive a young man beguiled and led astray. Through further difficulties and estrangements their friendship travelled on to a fortunate repose. The series of sonnets which is its record climbs to a high, sunlit resting-place. The other series, which records his passion for a dark temptress, is a whirl of moral chaos. Whether to dismiss him, or to draw him farther on, the woman had urged upon him the claims of conscience and duty ; in the latest sonnets—if this series be arranged in chronological order—Shakspere's passion, grown bitter and scornful (151, 152), strives, once for all, to defy and wrestle down his better will.
Shakspere of the Sonnets is not the Shakspere serenely victorious, infinitely charitable, wise with all wisdom of the intellect and the heart, whom we know through The Tempest
