But passion in him grew with what it fed on, and
after she faulted with Lord Herbert, we find him in a sonnet threatening
her that his "pity-wanting pain" may induce him to write of her as she
was. No doubt her pride and scornful strength revolted under this
treatment and she drew away from him. Tortured by desire he would then
praise her with some astonishing phrases; call her "the heart's blood of
beauty, love's invisible soul," and after some hesitation she would
yield again. No sooner was the "ruined love" rebuilt than she would
offend again, and again he would curse and threaten, and so the
wretched, half-miserable, half-ecstatic life of passion stormed along,
one moment in Heaven, the next in Hell.
All the while Shakespeare was longing, or thought he was longing for
truth and constancy, and at length he gave form and name to his desire
for winnowed purity of love and perfect constancy, and this consoling
but impalpable ideal he called Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia. But again
and again Miss Fitton reconquered him and at length his accumulated
bitterness compelled him to depict his mistress realistically.
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