CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION. I DOUBT if any reader who has followed the arguments and proofs which I have adduced in the foregoing pages will fail to see that the patron, the rival, and the mistress of the Sonnets, were living actualities. The identity of the patron and rival, I believe, is definitely proved; I have not attempted to prove that of the "dark lady," but think that it may yet be done. In 1594, on September 3, a poem called "Willobie his Avisa" was licensed for publication. In the following prefatory verses to that poem we have one of the earliest extant mentions of Shakespeare's name. “In Lavine land, though Livy boast There hath been seen a constant dame; And found, that, most in vain have sought Yet Tarquin pluckt his glittering grape And Shakespeare paints poor Lucrece' rape." Here we have Shakespeare mentioned by name. Two of the characters in the story of this poem have initials which coincide exactly with those of Shakespeare and Southampton: "Henry Willobie and W. S." The libelous nature and intention of the poem is revealed in the fact that, upon its second issue in 1596, it was condemned by the public censor and withdrawn from print. I am strongly of the opinion, held by many critics, that this poem refers to Shakespeare and Southampton, and to their acquaintance with the "dark lady" of the Sonnets, who is here given the name of 'Avisa," but I do not agree with those same critics in the opinion that this poem refers to the period of the affair with the "dark lady" revealed in the Sonnets, but am inclined to believe that it alludes to an earlier period of Shakespeare's acquaintance with this woman, which antedates this affair by nearly two years. Shakespeare's attack upon Chapman's "Amorous Zodiac," in the 20th and 21st Sonnets, and his references to the " Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy," in the 69th and 70th Sonnets, which I date shortly after the issue of these poems in 1595, were all anterior to Sonnets 30, 31, and 32, 40, 41, and 42, which reveal Southampton's culpability. The following lines from the 70th Sonnet are undoubtedly of an earlier time: "And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, Either not assail'd, or victor being charged." If the "H. W. and W. S." of "Willcbie his Avisa" denote Shakespeare or Southampton, the story there told refers to the earlier stages of the poet's friendship with the "dark lady." In the early verses of this poem " Avisa" is unmarried; in the later verses she is married. Her home, while she was still unmarried, is described as being somewhere in the country, as follows: 66 66 At east of this a castle stands; By ancient shepherds built of old; "In sea-bred soil, on Tempe downs; Whose silver spring from Neptune's well, The latter verses, which show her as married, describe quite a different residence, which is evidently in London. 66 66 See yonder house, where hangs the badge That makes my heart thus rage and swell.” Her connections, now, are also described as of meanest trade," consequently," the badge of Eng land's saint" cannot be armorial, but is, very probably, the sign of an inn. Avisa, then, has married an innkeeper; the inn is known as the George, or the St. George and Dragon. This will probably account for the fact that Shakespeare and Southampton, nobleman and player, could alike meet her on the same social footing. The very intimate knowledge of tavern life which Shakespeare shows us in many of his plays was, no doubt, the fruit of his experience. The story in this poem shows no indiscretion upon the part of Avisa; both H. W. and W. S. are represented as being unsuccessful in their intrigues and assaults. This poem, upon its first publication in 1594, was allowed to pass unchallenged; in 1596, however (in which year I date Southampton's infidelity to Shakespeare, during the latter's absence in Stratford), upon its second issue, it was immediately condemned by the public censor as libelous. This action of the censor shows that the object of the libel at this date felt the stroke and complained, and shows also that the complainant was a man of some consequence, to have secured such speedy action from his protest. Many of Shakespeare's Sonnets to the "dark lady" show a much more advanced stage in their affair than that shown in "Willobie his Avisa." Southampton's indiscretion was evidently a very temporary thing, and his pentance and apology seem to follow closely upon the avowal of his fault. I believe that Shakespeare wrote The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1594, and that the experiences of Proteus and Valentine 66 re to some extent portray the facts in his own and his friend's ease. Assuming, then, that Avisa and the "dark lady" are one and the same person, it is not impossible that research might yet reveal her identity. The allusions to her early and later homes which we get in this poem, and which were evidently used with indicative intention, may yet be followed out. It is possible, then, that the identity of the "dark lady " is not an insoluble mystery. There is not much to be gained, however, even could we definitely identify this woman. The female characters of Shakespeare's plays which are more plainly his own ideal conceptions of womanhood differ from this recurring sensuous and fleshly personality-which first appears in "Love's Labor's Lost" as Rosaline, and later in “Troilus and Cressida" as Cressida, and afterwards as Cleopatra-only in the added sensuousness; she always retains, to some extent, that captivating elusiveness of all Shakespeare's women. I have used the expression "his own ideal conception of womanhood," but no man, not even Shakespeare, ever evolved from his own consciousness such witchery of femininity as his female characters reveal. To have attained such mastery of this subject, he must have closely studied, not women, but a woman, and that woman a very "daughter of Eve "; one who, even in her faults and vices, preserved an "infinite variety" of charm. "Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds, |