One can easily guess how he came to know the self-willed and wild-living
maid-of-honour. Like many of the courtiers, Mistress Fitton affected the
society of the players. Kemp, the clown of his company, knew her, and
dedicated a book to her rather familiarly. I have always thought that
Shakespeare resented Kemp's intimacy with Mistress Fitton, for when
Hamlet advises the players to prevent the clown from gagging, he adds,
with a snarl of personal spite:
"a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it."
Mary Fitton's position, her proud, dark beauty, her daring of speech and
deed took Shakespeare by storm. She was his complement in every failing;
her strength matched his weakness; her resolution his hesitation, her
boldness his timidity; besides, she was of rank and place, and out of
pure snobbery he felt himself her inferior. He forgot that humble
worship was not the way to win a high-spirited girl. He loved her so
abjectly that he lost her; and it was undoubtedly his overpowering
sensuality and snobbishness which brought him to his knees, and his love
to ruin.
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