tioned in a letter from Robert Cecil so early as February 5) he got into deep disgrace over a love affair-evidently that which forms the subject of Shakespeare's Sonnets. He had for some time carried on a secret intrigue with the aforesaid Mary Fitton, a maid-of-honour who stood high in the Queen's good graces; and the secret now came to light. "Mistress Fitton," writes Cecil, "is proved with child, and the Earl of Pembroke, being examined, confesseth a fact, but utterly renounceth all marriage. I fear they will both dwell in the Tower awhile, for the Queen hath vowed to send them thither." In another contemporary letter it is stated that "in that tyme when that Mres Fytton was in great fauor . . . and duringe the time yt the Earle of Pembrooke fauord her, she would put off her head tire and tucke vp her clothes and take a large white cloake, and march as though she had bene a man to meete the said Earle out of the Courte." Mary Fitton gave birth to a still-born son; Pembroke lay for a month in the Fleet Prison, and was banished from Court. He shortly afterwards applied through Cecil for leave to travel abroad. The Queen's displeasure, he says, is "a hell" to him; he hopes the Queen will not carry her resentment so far as to bind him to the country which has now become "hateful to him of all others." The permission to travel seems to have been given and then revoked. In the middle of June he writes that imploring letter to Cecil in which the reference to "her whose Incomparable beauty was the onely sonne of my little world," was designed to touch Elizabeth's hard heart; for Pembroke, it is plain, had now realised that what had offended her Majesty was not so much his intrigue with Mary Fitton as the fact of his having overlooked her own much higher perfections. But the compliments came too late. Elizabeth, as we have already seen in the case of Essex, knew how to make the objects of her resentment suffer in that most sensitive point-the pocket. The "patent of the Forest of Dean,' which had been held by the late Lord Pembroke, expired with him, and the son expected, according to use and wont, to have it renewed in his favour; but it was assigned to Pembroke's rival, Sir Edward Winter, and not until seven years later, under James, did Pembroke recover it. Pembroke continued in disgrace, his renewed applications for permission to travel were persistently refused, and he was ordered to regard himself as banished from Court, and to "keep house in the country." It is this overshadowing of Pembroke's fortunes in 1601 which explains the temporary breaking-off of his relations with Shakespeare in London, indicated by the "Envoy with which Sonnet cxxvi. ends the series addressed to the Friend. The close and affectionate relation between them was no doubt revived under James. This appears clearly enough from the Dedication of the First Folio. Let us now cast a rapid glance over the remainder of Pembroke's career. His father's death placed him in possession of a large fortune, but the irregularity of his life left him seldom free from money embarrassments. In 1604 he married Lady Mary, the seventh daughter of Lord Talbot, and the marriage was celebrated with a tournament. His wife brought him a large property, but it was thought at the time that he paid very dear for it in having to take her into the bargain. The marriage was far from happy. Pembroke shared the love of literature which had distinguished his mother and his uncle, Sir Philip Sidney. According to Aubrey, he was "the greatest Mæcenas to learned men of any peer of his time or since." Among his "learned" friends were the poets Donne, and Daniel, and Massinger, who was the son of his father's steward. Ben Jonson composed a eulogistic epigram in his honour, as well he might, for every New Year Pembroke sent Ben £20 to buy books with. Inigo Jones is said to have visited Italy at his expense, and was frequently employed by him. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody and numerous other books are dedicated to him. Chapman, who was among his intimates, inscribed a sonnet to him at the close of his translation of the Iliad. This fact is of particular interest to us, because Chapman (as Professor Minto succeeded in establishing) is clearly the rival poet who paid court to Pembroke, won his goodwill and admiration, and thereby aroused jealousy and melancholy selfcriticism in Shakespeare's breast, as we read in Sonnets lxxviii.— lxxxvi.1 It is especially on Sonnet lxxxvi. that Minto bases his identification of the rival poet with Chapman. The very opening line, referring to the "proud full sail of his great verse," suggests at once the fourteen-syllable measure in which Chapman translated 1 I do not find that Mr. G. A. Leigh has succeeded in identifying the rival poet with Tasso (Westminster Review, February 1897). the Iliad. Chapman was full of a passionate enthusiasm for the art of poetry, which he lost no opportunity of glorifying; and he laid claim to supernatural inspiration. In the Dedication to his poem The Shadow of the Night (1594), he speaks with severe contempt of the presumption of those who "think Skill so mightily pierced with their loves that she should prostitutely show them her secrets, when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching-yea, not without having drops of their souls, like a heavenly familiar." Hence Shakespeare's lines "Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write and the expression "He, nor that affable familiar ghost Which nightly gulls him with intelligence." After the accession of James, Pembroke immediately took a high position at the new Court. Before the year 1603 was out, he was a Knight of the Garter, and had entertained the King at Wilton. He rose from one high post to another, until in 1615 he became Lord Chamberlain; but he continued to the last the dissipated life of his youth. He devoted large sums of money to the exploration and colonisation of America. Places were named after him in the Bermudas and Virginia. In 1614, moreover, he became a member of the East India Company. He opposed the Spanish Alliance, and was no friend to the King's foreign policy. He is thought to have instigated in some measure the attack on the Mexico fleet for which Raleigh paid so dear. He was an opponent of Bacon as Lord Chancellor, and in 1621 advocated an inquiry into the charges of corruption which were brought against him; but afterwards, like Southampton, displayed great moderation, and spoke strongly against the proposal to deprive Bacon of his peerage. He stood by the King's deathbed in March 1625, had a serious illness in 1626, and died in April 1630 "of an apoplexy after a full and cheerful supper." Donne in 1660 published some poems of his among a collection by several other hands. Here is a specimen of his work: "Yet when unto our Eyes Each others sight And makes to us a constant night O give no waye to griefe, But let beliefe Of mutuall loue This wonder to the vulgar proue, Our bodies, not we, moue. Let not thy wit beweepe By distance, our lipp-ioyning blisse, Tyler has pointed out certain resemblances of thought and expression between this poem and several of Shakespeare's Sonnets (xxii., lxii., xliii., xxvii.). No wonder that Pembroke as a poet should have shown himself a pupil of Shakespeare's. VI THE "DARK LADY" OF THE SONNETS— MARY FITTON IN speaking of Love's Labour's Lost, I remarked that it was not difficult to distinguish the original text of the comedy from the portions added and altered during the revision of 1598; and I cited (p. 47) several instances in which the distinction was clear. Especial emphasis was laid on the fact that Biron's (or, as the context shows, Biron-Shakespeare's) rapturous panegyrics of love in the fourth act belong to the later date. At another place (p. 100) it was pointed out that the two Rosalines of Love's Labour's Lost (end of the third act) and of Romeo and Juliet (ii. 4) were in all probability drawn from the same model, since she is in both places described as a blonde with black eyes. In the original text of Love's Labour's Lost (Act iii.) she is expressly called "A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes." All the more surprising must it seem that during the revision the poet quite obviously had before his eyes another model, repeatedly described as "black," whose dark complexion indeed, so uncommon and un-English that it was apt to be thought ugly, is insisted upon as strongly as that of the "Dark Lady" in the Sonnets. Immediately before Biron bursts forth into his great hymn to Eros, in which Shakespeare so clearly makes him his mouthpiece, the King banters him as to the murky hue of the object of his adoration: "King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony. A wife of such wood were felicity. |