Dark Lady of the Sonnets | Page 3

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THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
BY BERNARD SHAW

CONTENTS
Preface How the Play came to be Written Thomas Tyler Frank Harris
Harris "durch Mitleid wissend" "Sidney's Sister: Pembroke's Mother"
Shakespear's Social Standing This Side Idolatry Shakespear's
Pessimism Gaiety of Genius Jupiter and Semele The Idol of the
Bardolaters Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion
Shakespear and Democracy Shakespear and the British Public The
Dark Lady of the Sonnets

THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
1910

PREFACE TO THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
How the Play came to be Written
I had better explain why, in this little _piece d'occasion_, written for a
performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing a
National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespear, I have identified the
Dark Lady with Mistress Mary Fitton. First, let me say that I do not
contend that the Dark Lady was Mary Fitton, because when the case in
Mary's favor (or against her, if you please to consider that the Dark
Lady was no better than she ought to have been) was complete, a
portrait of Mary came to light and turned out to be that of a fair lady,
not of a dark one. That settles the question, if the portrait is authentic,
which I see no reason to doubt, and the lady's hair undyed, which is
perhaps less certain. Shakespear rubbed in the lady's complexion in his
sonnets mercilessly; for in his day black hair was as unpopular as red
hair was in the early days of Queen Victoria. Any tinge lighter than
raven black must be held fatal to the strongest claim to be the Dark
Lady. And so, unless it can be shewn that Shakespear's sonnets
exasperated Mary Fitton into dyeing her hair and getting painted in
false colors, I must give up all pretence that my play is historical. The
later suggestion of Mr Acheson that the Dark Lady, far from being a
maid of honor, kept a tavern in Oxford and was the mother of Davenant
the poet, is the one I should have adopted had I wished to be up to date.
Why, then, did I introduce the Dark Lady as Mistress Fitton?
Well, I had two reasons. The play was not to have been written by me
at all, but by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton; and it was she who suggested a
scene of jealousy between Queen Elizabeth and the Dark Lady at the
expense of the unfortunate Bard. Now this, if the Dark Lady was a
maid of honor, was quite easy. If she were a tavern landlady, it would
have strained all probability. So I stuck to Mary Fitton. But I had
another and more personal reason. I was, in a manner, present at the
birth of the Fitton theory. Its parent and I had become acquainted; and
he used to consult me on obscure passages in the sonnets, on which, as
far as I can remember, I never succeeded in throwing the faintest light,
at a time when nobody else thought my opinion, on that or any other

subject, of the slightest importance. I thought it would be friendly to
immortalize him, as the silly literary saying is, much as Shakespear
immortalized Mr W. H., as he said he would, simply by writing about
him.
Let me tell the story formally.

Thomas Tyler
Throughout the eighties at least, and probably for some years before,
the British Museum reading room was used daily by a gentleman of
such astonishing and crushing ugliness that no one who had once seen
him could ever thereafter forget him. He was of