Do you think I will?
Troilus. No: but something may be done that we will not."
The first lines show that poor Shakespeare often felt out of it at
Court. The suggestion, I have put in italics, is unspeakable.
Shakespeare made use of every sensual bait in hope of winning his love,
liming himself and not the woman. His vanity was so inordinate that
instead of saying to himself, "it's natural that a high-born girl of
nineteen should prefer a great lord of her own age to a poor poet of
thirty-four": he strives to persuade himself and us that Mary Fitton was
won away from him by "subtle games," and in his rage of wounded vanity
he wrote that tremendous libel on her, which he put in the mouth of
Ulysses:
"Fie, fie upon her!
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
That give accosting welcome ere it comes,
And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts
To every ticklish reader! set them down
For sluttish spoils of opportunity
And daughters of the game.
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