He pictures the woman to the life; strong, proud, with
dark eyes and hair, pale complexion--a wanton with the rare power of
carrying off even a wanton's shame. He finds a method new to literature
to describe her. He will have no poetic exaggeration; snow is whiter
than her breasts; violets sweeter than her breath:
"And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare."
His passion is so intense that he has no desire to paint her seduction
as greater than it was. She has got into his blood, so to speak, and
each drop of it under the microscope would show her image. Take any
sonnet at haphazard, and you will hear the rage of his desire.
But what is the youth like?--"the master-mistress" of his passion, to
give him the title which seems to have convinced the witless of
Shakespeare's guilt. Not one word of description is to be found
anywhere; no painting epithet--nothing. Where is the cry of this
terrible, shameless, outrageous passion that mastered Shakespeare's
conscience and enslaved his will? Hardly a phrase that goes beyond
affection--such affection as Shakespeare at thirty-four might well feel
for a gifted, handsome aristocrat like Lord Herbert, who had youth,
beauty, wealth, wit to recommend him.
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