The Queen had been kind to him.
He ended the epilogue to the "Second Part of Henry IV.," which he had
just finished, by kneeling "to pray for the Queen." Essex or Southampton
had no doubt brought his work to Elizabeth's notice: she had approved
his "Falstaff" and encouraged him to continue. Of all his successes,
this royal recognition was surely the one which pleased him most. He was
at the topmost height of happy hours when he met the woman who was to
change the world for him.
In the lives of great men the typical tragedies are likely to repeat
themselves. Socrates was condemned to drain many a poisoned cup before
he was given the bowl of hemlock: Shakespeare had come to grief with
many women before he fell with Mary Fitton. It was his ungovernable
sensuality which drove him in youth to his untimely and unhappy
marriage; it was his ungovernable sensuality, too, which in his maturity
led him to worship Mary Fitton, and threw him into those twelve years of
bondage to earthy, coarse service which he regretted so bitterly when
the passion-fever had burned itself out.
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