The study will probably teach us that
Shakespeare was the most impassioned lover and love-poet in all
literature.
History tells us that Mary Fitton became a maid of honour to Queen
Elizabeth in 1595 at the age of seventeen. From a letter addressed by
her father to Sir Robert Cecil on January 29th, 1599, it is fairly
certain that she had already been married at the age of sixteen; the
union was probably not entirely valid, but the mere fact suggests a
certain recklessness of character, or overpowering sensuality, or both,
and shows that even as a girl Mistress Fitton was no shrinking, timid,
modest maiden. Wrapped in a horseman's cloak she used to leave the
Palace at night to meet her lover, Lord William Herbert. Though twice
married, she had an illegitimate child by Herbert, and two later by Sir
Richard Leveson.
This extraordinary woman is undoubtedly the sort of woman Shakespeare
depicted as the "dark lady" of the sonnets. Nearly every sonnet of the
twenty-six devoted to his mistress contains some accusation against her;
and all these charges are manifestly directed against one and the same
woman.
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