Dark Lady of the Sonnets

by George Bernard Shaw

Fin de siecle 15-1600. Midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames. The Palace clock chimes four quarters and strikes eleven. A Beefeater on guard. A Cloaked Man approaches.

THE BEEFEATER: Stand. Who goes there? Give the word.

THE MAN: Marry! I cannot. I have clean forgotten it.

THE BEEFEATER: Then cannot you pass here. What is your business? Who are you? Are you a true man?

THE MAN: Far from it, Master Warder. I am not the same man two days together: sommetimes Adam, sometimes Benvolio, and anon the Ghost.

THE BEEFEATER: (recoiling) A ghost! Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

THE MAN: Well said, Master Warder. With your leave I will set that down in writing; for I have a very poor and unhappy brain for remembrance. (He takes out his tablets and writes.) Methinks this is a good scene, with you on your lonely watch, and I approaching like a ghost in the moonlight. Stare not so amazedly at me; but mark what I say. I keep tryst here to-night with a dark lady. She promised to bribe the warder. I gave her the wherewithal: four tickets for the Globe Theatre.

THE BEEFEATER: Plague on her! She gave me two only.

THE MAN: (detaching a tablet) My friend: present this tablet, and you will be welcomed at any time when the plays of Will Shakespear are in hand. Bring your wife. Bring your friends. Bring the whole garrison. There is ever plenty of room.

THE BEEFEATER: I care not for these new-fangled plays. No man can understand a word of them. They are all talk. Will you not give me a pass for The Spanish Tragedy?

THE MAN: To see The Spanish Tragedy one pays, my friend. Here are the means. (He gives him a piece of gold.)

THE BEEFEATER: (overwhelmed) Gold! Oh, sir, you are a better paymaster than your dark lady.

THE MAN: Women are thrifty, my friend.

THE BEEFEATER: Tis so, sir. And you have to consider that the most open handed of us must een cheapen that which we buy every day. This lady has to make a present to a warder nigh every night of her life.

THE MAN: (turning pale) I'll not believe it.

THE BEEFEATER: Now you, sir, I dare be sworn, do not have an adventure like this twice in the year.

THE MAN: Villain: Wouldst tell me that my dark lady hath ever done thus before? That she maketh occasions to meet other men?

THE BEEFEATER: Now the Lord bless your innocence, sir, do you think you are the only pretty man in the world? A merry lady, sir: a warm bit of stuff. Go to: I'll not see her pass a deceit on a gentleman that hath given me the first piece of gold I ever handled.

THE MAN: Master Warder: is it not a strange thing that we, knowing that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular drab no better than the rest?

THE BEEFEATER: Not all, sir. Decent bodies, many of them.

THE MAN: (intolerantly) No. All false. All. If thou deny it, thou liest.

THE BEEFEATER: You judge too much by the Court, sir. There, indeed, you may say of frailty that its name is woman.

THE MAN: (pulling out his tablets again) Prithee say that again: that about frailty: The strain of music.

THE BEEFEATER: What strain of music, sir? I'm no musician, God knows.

THE MAN: There is music in your soul: many of your degree have it very notably. (Writing) "Frailty: thy name is woman!" (Repeating it affectionately) "Thy name is woman."

THE BEEFEATER: Well, sir, it is but four words. Are you a snapper-up of such unconsidered trifles?

THE MAN: (eagerly) Snapper-up of-- (he gasps) Oh! Immortal phrase! (He writes it down). This man is a greater than I.

THE BEEFEATER: You have my lord Pembroke's trick, sir.

THE MAN: Like enough: He is my near friend. But what call you his trick?

THE BEEFEATER: Making sonnets by moonlight. And to the same lady too.

THE MAN: No!

THE BEEFEATER: Last night he stood here on your errand, and in your shoes.

THE MAN: Thou, too, Brutus! And I called him friend!

THE BEEFEATER: Tis ever so, sir.

THE MAN: Tis ever so. Twas ever so. (He turns away, overcome). Two Gentlemen of Verona! Judas! Judas!!

THE BEEFEATER: Is he so bad as that, sir?

THE MAN: (recovering his charity and self-possession) Bad? Oh no. Human, Master Warder, human. We call one another names when we are offended, as children do. That is all.

THE BEEFEATER: Ay, sir: words, words, words. Mere wind, sir. We fill our bellies with the east wind, sir, as the Scripture hath it. You cannot feed capons so.

THE MAN: A good cadence. By your leave. (He makes a note of it).

THE BEEFEATER: What manner of thing is a cadence, sir? I have not heard of it.

THE MAN: A thing to rule the world with, friend.

THE BEEFEATER: You speak strangely, sir: no offence. But, an't like you, you are a very civil gentleman; and a poor man feels drawn to you, you being, as twere, willing to share your thought with him.

THE MAN: Tis my trade. But alas! the world for the most part will none of my thoughts.

(Lamplight streams from the palace door as it opens from within.)

THE BEEFEATER: Here comes your lady, sir. I'll to t'other end of my ward. You may een take your time about your business: I shall not return too suddenly unless my sergeant comes prowling round. Tis a fell sergeant, sir: Strict in his arrest. Go'd'en, sir; and good luck! (He goes).

THE MAN: "Strict in his arrest"! "Fell sergeant"! (As if tasting a ripe plum) O-o-o-h! (He makes a note of them).

(A Cloaked Lady gropes her way from the palace and wanders along the terrace, walking in her sleep.)

THE LADY: (rubbing her hands as if washing them) Out, damned spot. You will mar all with these cosmetics. God made you one face; and you make yourself another. Think of your grave, woman, not ever of being beautified. All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this Tudor hand.

THE MAN: "All the perfumes of Arabia"! "Beautified"! "Beautified"! A poem in a single word. Can this be my Mary? (To the Lady) Why do you speak in a strange voice, and utter poetry for the first time? Are you ailing? You walk like the dead. Mary! Mary!

THE LADY: (echoing him) Mary! Mary! Who would have thought that woman to have had so much blood in her! Is it my fault that my counsellors put deeds of blood on me? Fie! If you were women you would have more wit than to stain the floor so foully. Hold not up her head so: the hair is false. I tell you yet again, Mary's buried: she cannot come out of her grave. I fear her not: these cats that dare jump into thrones though they be fit only for men's laps must be put away. Whats done cannot be undone. Out, I say. Fie! a queen, and freckled!

THE MAN: (shaking her arm) Mary, I say: Art asleep?

(The Lady wakes; starts; and nearly faints. He catches her on his arm.)

THE LADY: Where am I? What art thou?

THE MAN: I cry your mercy. I have mistook your person all this while. Methought you were my Mary: my mistress.

THE LADY: (outraged) Profane fellow: How do you dare?

THE MAN: Be not wroth with me, lady. My mistress is a marvellous proper woman. But she does not speak so well as you. "All the perfumes of Arabia"! That was well said: spoken with good accent and excellent discretion.

THE LADY: Have I been in speech with you here?

THE MAN: Why, yes, fair lady. Have you forgot it?

THE LADY: I have walked in my sleep.

THE MAN: Walk ever in your sleep, fair one; for then your words drop like honey.

THE LADY: (with cold majesty) Know you to whom you speak, sir, that you dare express yourself so saucily?

THE MAN: (unabashed) Not I, not care neither. You are some lady of the Court, belike. To me there are but two sorts of women: those with excellent voices, sweet and low, and cackling hens that cannot make me dream. Your voice has all manner of loveliness in it. Grudge me not a short hour of its music.

THE LADY: Sir: You are overbold. Season your admiration for a while with--

THE MAN: (holding up his hand to stop her) "Season your admiration for a while--"

THE LADY: Fellow: Do you dare mimic me to my face?

THE MAN: Tis music. Can you not hear? When a good musician sings a song, do you not sing it and sing it again till you have caught and fixed its perfect melody? Season your admiration for a while": God! the history of man's heart is in that one word admiration. Admiration! (Taking up his tablets) What was it? "Suspend your admiration for a space--"

THE LADY: A very vile jingle of esses. I said "Season your--"

THE MAN: (hastily) Season: ay, season, season, season. Plague on my memory, my wretched memory! I must een write it down. (He begins to write, but stops, his memory failing him). Yet tell me which was the vile jingle? You said very justly: mine own ear caught it even as my false tongue said it.

THE LADY: You said "for a space." I said "for a while."

THE MAN: "For a while" (he corrects it). Good! (Ardently) And now be mine neither for a space nor a while, but for ever.

THE LADY: Odds my life! Are you by chance making love to me, knave?

THE MAN: Nay: Tis you who have made the love: I but pour it out at your feet. I cannot but love a lass that sets such store by an apt word. Therefore vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman--No: I have said that before somewhere; and the wordy garment of my love for you must be fire-new--

THE LADY: You talk too much, sir. Let me warn you: I am more accustomed to be listened to than preached at.

THE MAN: The most are like that that do talk well. But though you spake with the tongues of angels, as indeed you do, yet know that I am the king of words--

THE LADY: A king, ha!

THE MAN: No less. We are poor things, we men and women--

THE LADY: Dare you call me woman?

THE MAN: What nobler name can I tender you? How else can I love you? Yet you may well shrink from the name: Have I not said we are but poor things? Yet there is a power that can redeem us.

THE LADY: Gramercy for your sermon, sir. I hope I know my duty.

THE MAN: This is no sermon, but the living truth. The power I speak of is the power of immortal poesy. For know that vile as this world is, and worms as we are, you have but to invest all this vileness with a magical garment of words to transfigure us and uplift our souls til earth flowers into a million heavens.

THE LADY: You spoil your heaven with your million. You are extravagant. Observe some measure in your speech.

THE MAN: You speak now as Ben does.

THE LADY: And who, pray, is Ben?

THE MAN: A learned bricklayer who thinks that the sky is at the top of his ladder, and so takes it on him to rebuke me for flying. I tell you there is no word yet coined and no melody yet sung that is extravagant and majestical enough for the glory that lovely words can reveal. It is heresy to deny it: Have you not been taught that in the beginning was the Word? That the Word was with God? nay, that the Word was God?

THE LADY: Beware, fellow, how you presume to speak of holy things. The Queen is the head of the Church.

THE MAN: You are the head of my Church when you speak as you did at first. "All the perfumes of Arabia"! Can the Queen speak thus? They say she playeth well upon the virginals. Let her play so to me; and I'll kiss her hands. But until then, you are my Queen; and I'll kiss those lips that have dropt music on my heart. (He puts his arms about her).

THE LADY: Unmeasured impudence! On your life, take your hands from me.

(The Dark Lady comes stooping along the terrace behind them like a running thrush. When she sees how they are employed, she rises angrily to her full height, and listens jealously.)

THE MAN: (unaware of the Dark Lady) Then cease to make my hands tremble with the streams of life you pour through them. You hold me as the lodestar holds the iron: I cannot but cling to you. We are lost, you and I: nothing can separate us now.

THE DARK LADY: We shall see that, false lying hound, you and your filthy trull. (With two vigorous cuffs, she knocks the pair asunder, sending the man, who is unlucky enough to receive a righthanded blow, sprawling an the flags). Take that, both of you!

THE CLOAKED LADY: (in towering wrath, throwing off her cloak and turning in outraged majesty on her assailant) High treason!

THE DARK LADY: (recognizing her and falling on her knees in abject terror) Will: I am lost: I have struck the Queen.

THE MAN: (sitting up as majestically as his ignominious posture allows) Woman: you have struck WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR!

QUEEN ELIZABETH: (stupent) Marry, come up!!! Struck William Shakespear quotha! And who in the name of all the sluts and jades and light-o'-loves and fly-by-nights that infest this palace of mine, may William Shakespear be?

THE DARK LADY: Madam: he is but a player. Oh, I could have my hand cut off--

QUEEN ELIZABETH: Belike you will, mistress. Have you bethought you that I am like to have your head cut off as well?

THE DARK LADY: Will: Save me. Oh, save me.

ELIZABETH: Save you! A likely savior, on my royal word! I had thought this fellow at least an esquire; for I had hoped that even the vilest of my ladies would not have dishonored my Court by wantoning with a baseborn servant.

SHAKESPEAR: (indignantly scrambling to his feet) Base-born! I, a Shakespear of Stratford! I, whose mother was an Arden! Baseborn! You forget yourself, madam.

ELIZABETH: (furious) S'blood! Do I so? I will teach you--

THE DARK LADY: (rising from her knees and throwing herself between them) Will: in God's name anger her no further. It is death. Madam: do not listen to him.

SHAKESPEAR: Not were it een to save your life, Mary, not to mention mine own, will I

flatter a monarch who forgets what is due to my family. I deny not that my father was brought down to be a poor bankrupt; but twas his gentle blood that was ever too generous for trade. Never did he disown his debts. Tis true he paid them not; but it is an attested truth that he gave bills for them; and twas those bills, in the hands of base hucksters, that were his undoing.

ELIZABETH: (grimly) The son of your father shall learn his place in the presence of the daughter of Harry the Eighth.

SHAKESPEAR: (swelling with intolerant importance) Name not that inordinate man in the same breath with Stratford's worthiest alderman. John Shakespear wedded but once: Harry Tudor was married six times. You should blush to utter his name.

(Dark Lady and Elizabeth cry out together)

THE DARK LADY: Will: For pity's sake-- ELIZABETH: Insolent dog--

SHAKESPEAR: (cutting them short) How know you that King Harry was indeed your father?

ELIZABETH: Zounds! Now by-- (she stops to grind her teeth with rage)

THE DARK LADY: She will have me whipped through the streets. Oh God! Oh God!

SHAKESPEAR: Learn to know yourself better, madam. I am an honest gentleman of unquestioned parentage, and have already sent in my demand for the coat-of-arms that is lawfully mine. Can you say as much for yourself?

ELIZABETH: (almost beside herself) Another word; and I begin with mine own hands the work the hangman shall finish.

SHAKESPEAR: You are no true Tudor: This baggage here has as good a right to your royal seat as you. What maintains you on the throne of England? Is it your renowned wit? your wisdom that sets at naught the craftiest statesmen of the Christian world? No. Tis the mere chance that might have happened to any milkmaid, the caprice of Nature that made you the most wondrous piece of beauty the age hath seen. (Elizabeth's raised fists, on the point of striking him, fall to her side.) That is what hath brought all men to your feet, and founded your throne on the impregnable rock of your proud heart, a stony island in a sea of desire. There, madam, is some wholesome blunt honest speaking for you. Now do your worst.

ELIZABETH: (with dignity) Master Shakespear: It is well for you that I am a merciful prince. I make allowance for your rustic ignorance. But remember that there are things which be true, and are yet not seemly to be said (I will not say to a queen; for you will have it that I am none) but to a virgin.

SHAKESPEAR: (bluntly) It is no fault of mine that you are a virgin, madam, albeit tis my misfortune.

THE DARK LADY: (terrified again) In mercy, madam, hold no further discourse with him. He hath ever some lewd jest on his tongue. You hear how he useth me! Calling me baggage and the like to your Majesty's face.

ELIZABETH: As for you, mistress, I have yet to demand what your business is at this hour in this place, and how you come to be so concerned with a player that you strike blindly at your sovereign in your jealousy of him.

THE DARK LADY: Madam: as I live and hope for salvation--

SHAKESPEAR: (sardonically) Ha!

THE DARK LADY: (angrily)--ay, I'm as like to be saved as thou that believest naught save some black magic of words and verses--I say, madam, as I am a living woman I came here to break with him for ever. Oh, madam, if you would know what misery is, listen to this man that is more than man and less at the same time. He will tie you down to anatomize your very soul: He will wring tears of blood from your humiliation; and then he will heal the wound with flatteries that no woman can resist.

SHAKESPEAR: Flatteries! (Kneeling) Oh, madam, I put my case at your royal feet. I confess to much. I have a rude tongue: I am unmannerly: I blaspheme against the holiness of anointed royalty; but oh, my royal mistress, AM I a flatterer?

ELIZABETH: I absolve you as to that. You are far too plain a dealer to please me. (He rises gratefully).

THE DARK LADY: Madam: he is flattering you even as he speaks.

ELIZABETH: (a terrible flash in her eye) Ha! Is it so?

SHAKESPEAR: Madam: She is jealous; and, heaven help me! not without reason. Oh, you say you are a merciful prince; but that was cruel of you, that hiding of your royal dignity when you found me here. For how can I ever be content with this black-haired, black-eyed, black-avised devil again now that I have looked upon real beauty and real majesty?

THE DARK LADY: (wounded and desperate) He hath swore to me ten times over that the day shall come in England when black women, for all their foulness, shall be more thought on than fair ones. (To Shakespear, scolding at him) Deny it if thou canst. Oh, he is compact of lies and scorns. I am tired of being tossed up to heaven and dragged down to hell at every whim that takes him. I am ashamed to my very soul that I have abased myself to love one that my father would not have deemed fit to hold my stirrup--one that will talk to all the world about me--that will put my love and my shame into his plays and make me blush for myself there--that will write sonnets about me that no man of gentle strain would put his hand to. I am all disordered: I know not what I am saying to your Majesty: I am of all ladies most deject and wretched--

SHAKESPEAR: Ha! At last sorrow hath struck a note of music out of thee. "Of all ladies most deject and wretched." (He makes a note of it).

THE DARK LADY: Madam: I implore you give me leave to go. I am distracted with grief and shame. I--

ELIZABETH: Go (The Dark Lady tries to kiss her hand). No more. Go. (The Dark Lady goes, convulsed). You have been cruel to that poor fond wretch, Master Shakespear.

SHAKESPEAR: I am not cruel, madam; but you know the fable of Jupiter and Semele. I could not help my lightnings scorching her.

ELIZABETH: You have an overweening conceit of yourself, sir, that displeases your Queen.

SHAKESPEAR: Oh, madam, can I go about with the modest cough of a minor poet, belittling my inspiration and making the mightiest wonder of your reign a thing of nought? I have said that "not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes shall outlive" the words with which I make the world glorious or foolish at my will. Besides, I would have you think me great enough to grant me a boon.

ELIZABETH: I hope it is a boon that may be asked of a virgin Queen without offence, sir. I mistrust your forwardness; and I bid you remember that I do not suffer persons of your degree (if I may say so without offence to your father the alderman) to presume too far.

SHAKESPEAR: Oh, madam, I shall not forget myself again; though by my life, could I make you a serving wench, neither a queen nor a virgin should you be for so much longer as a flash of lightning might take to cross the river to the Bankside. But since you are a queen and will none of me, nor of Philip of Spain, nor of any other mortal man, I must een contain myself as best I may, and ask you only for a boon of State.

ELIZABETH: A boon of State already! You are becoming a courtier like the rest of them. You lack advancement.

SHAKESPEAR: "Lack advancement." By your Majesty's leave: a queenly phrase. (He is about to write it down).

ELIZABETH: (striking the tablets from his hand) Your tables begin to anger me, sir. I am not here to write your plays for you.

SHAKESPEAR: You are here to inspire them, madam. For this, among the rest, were you ordained. But the boon I crave is that you do endow a great playhouse, or, if I may ake bold to coin a scholarly name for it, a National Theatre, for the better instruction and gracing of your Majesty's subjects.

ELIZABETH: Why, sir, are there not theatres enow on the Bankside and in Blackfriars?

SHAKESPEAR: Madam: these are the adventures of needy and desperate men that must, to save themselves from perishing of want, give the sillier sort of people what they best like; and what they best like, God knows, is not their own betterment and instruction, as we well see by the example of the churches, which must needs compel men to frequent them, though they be open to all without charge. Only when there is a matter of a murder, or a plot, or a pretty youth in petticoats, or some naughty tale of wantonness, will your subjects pay the great cost of good players and their finery, with a little profit to boot. To prove this I will tell you that I have written two noble and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high nature and fruitful industry even as your Majesty is: the one a skilful physician, the other a sister devoted to good works. I have also stole from a book of idle wanton tales two of the most damnable foolishnesses in the world, in the one of which a woman goeth in man's attire and maketh impudent love to her swain, who pleaseth the groundlings by overthrowing a wrestler; whilst, in the other, one of the same kidney sheweth her wit by saying endless naughtinesses to a gentleman as lewd as herself. I have writ these to save my friends from penury, yet shewing my scorn for such follies and for them that praise them by calling the one As You Like It, meaning that it is not as I like it, and the other Much Ado About Nothing, as it truly is. And now these two filthy pieces drive their nobler fellows from the stage, where indeed I cannot have my lady physician presented at all, she being too honest a woman for the taste of the town. Wherefore I humbly beg your Majesty to give order that a theatre be endowed out of the public revenue for the playing of those pieces of mine which no merchant will touch, seeing that his gain is so much greater with the worse than with the better. Thereby you shall also encourage other men to undertake the writing of plays who do now despise it and leave it wholly to those whose counsels will work little good to your realm. For this writing of plays is a great matter, forming as it does the minds and affections of men in such sort that whatsoever they see done in show on the stage, they will presently be doing in earnest in the world, which is but a larger stage. Of late, as you know, the Church taught the people by means of plays; but the people flocked only to such as were full of superstitious miracles and bloody martyrdoms; and so the Church, which also was just then brought into straits by the policy of your royal father, did abandon and discountenance the art of playing; and thus it fell into the hands of poor players and greedy merchants that had their pockets to look to and not the greatness of this your kingdom. Therefore now must your Majesty take up that good work that your Church hath abandoned, and restore the art of playing to its former use and dignity.

ELIZABETH: Master Shakespear: I will speak of this matter to the Lord Treasurer.

SHAKESPEAR: Then am I undone, madam; for there was never yet a Lord Treasurer that could find a penny for anything over and above the necessary expenses of your government, save for a war or a salary for his own nephew.

ELIZABETH: Master Shakespear: You speak sooth; yet cannot I in any wise mend it. I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd a place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand things to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have its penny from the general purse. I tell thee, Master Will, it will be three hundred years and more before my subjects learn that man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the mouth of those whom God inspires. By that time you and I will be dust beneath the feet of the horses, if indeed there be any horses then, and men be still riding instead of flying. Now it may be that by then your works will be dust also.

SHAKESPEAR: They will stand, madam: fear nor for that.

ELIZABETH: It may prove so. But of this I am certain (for I know my countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world, even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure. And she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso she seeth everybody else doing. In the meantime you must content yourself as best you can by the playing of those two pieces which you give out as the most damnable ever writ, but which your countrymen, I warn you, will swear are the best you have ever done. But this I will say, that if I could speak across the ages to our descendants, I should heartily recommend them to fulfil your wish; for the Scottish minstrel hath well said that he that maketh the songs of a nation is mightier than he that maketh its laws; and the same may well be true of plays and interludes. (The clock chimes the first quarter. The warder returns on his round.) And now, sir, we are upon the hour when it better beseems a virgin queen to be abed than to converse alone with the naughtiest of her subjects. Ho there! Who keeps ward on the queen's lodgings tonight?

THE WARDER. I do, an't please your majesty.

ELIZABETH: See that you keep it better in future. You have let pass a most dangerous gallant even to the very door of our royal chamber. Lead him forth; and bring me word when he is safely locked out; for I shall scarce dare disrobe until the palace gates are between us.

SHAKESPEAR: (kissing her hand) My body goes through the gate into the darkness, madam; but my thoughts follow you.

ELIZABETH: How! to my bed!

SHAKESPEAR: No, madam, to your prayers, in which I beg you to remember my theatre.

ELIZABETH: That is my prayer to posterity. Forget not your own to God; and so goodnight, Master Will.

SHAKESPEAR: Goodnight, great Elizabeth. God save the Queen!

ELIZABETH: Amen.

Exeunt severally: She to her chamber: He, in custody of the warder, to the gate nearest Blackfriars.

THE END.

Ayot, St. Lawrence, 20th June 1910.