A sonnet is a poem that has fourteen lines with a fixed rhyme scheme. The favored sonnet of my time was the Shakespearean sonnet, which consists of three quatrains with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefef ending in a couplet with a rhyme scheme of gg (Andrews 3:92). That master William Shakespeare wrote sonnets of this kind. He wrote 154 of them, in fact, published in a book called Sonnets. Sonnets 1 through 126 are written to a young man and sonnets 127 through 152 are addressed to me, the dark lady (Johnson).
          I remember the young man. Young, he was, and pretty, in a feminine way. He was always the one desired by the women, but he didn’t seem to want any of them. He didn’t want to marry or to have children, at least when I knew him. He was thought to be homosexual, enjoying the men more than the women (Davies “Man”). Except, of course, that he was involved with me as well (Andrews 3:92).
          The identity of the young man is a fact that no one knows, not even I. I don’t busy myself with the names of the fellows, just that they come to me. It is thought that he is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, or maybe Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (“Who Addressed”). Maybe he is Willie Hughes, a nobody, “a homosexual ship’s cook or boy actor” (Johnson). No one knows for sure who the young man is.
          Shakespeare knew the young man as well as I. His first 126 sonnets were written to him, after all. He seemed to care for the young man quite deeply. The first 17 sonnets were urging him to marry and have children who could carry on his beauty, using that particular question in Sonnet 13 where Shakespeare wrote:

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day,
And barren rage of death’s eternal hold? (Davies “Man”)

          After those first 17 sonnets, Shakespeare seemed to accept that the young man wasn’t going to marry. He swore that his sonnets would carry on the young man’s beauty where children would not (Johnson). The sonnets took another turn, a sexual turn. He was a man, after all. What else would his mind be focused on? He proclaimed the young man’s beauty, comparing his face to a woman’s face and his heart to a woman’s heart. He swore that nature was female and “chose to make him a man for selfish female reasons.” (Davies “Man”) Nature had made the young man a male, had given him a male’s organs, and therefore stood in the way of Shakespeare and the young man having a more sexual relationship. He could dream, but Shakespeare could not have the young man (Davies “Man”).
          Some people say that Shakespeare’s thoughts about the young man indicate that he was gay. They are, however, missing the facts. Shakespeare was not gay. It was common in Elizabethan times for male friends to speak of each other in that way without it being so much as an indication of sexual intentions (Andrews 3:95). With that standing true, there is no way to tell whether Shakespeare really desired the young man or not. And look at his plays, or his other sonnets! They are loaded with heterosexual references, not homosexual ones. He was married with three children, and he couldn’t very well do that with a male (Davies “Man”). And above all, he came to me, didn’t he (Davies “Lady”)?
          I had relations with both the young man and with Shakespeare. What a love triangle we were! Shakespeare was in pain, of course. The young man who was out of his reach and the dark lady whom he was bedding were both unfaithful to him and involved with each other. But of course I was unfaithful. I’m always unfaithful. It is in my line of business, of course. Shakespeare knew it; yes he did. He so much as compared his own desire for me to a “sickly appetite” in Sonnet 147. I made him my prisoner, luring him into such sinful acts by that “sickly appetite” he had for me. And so he got mad at me for the relationship between the young man and me. He blamed it all on me, his sin, rather than risk his oh-so-important friendship with the young man. For alas, the young man was his “comfort” and I his “despair”(Andrews 3:95).
          As much as Shakespeare viewed me as sinful, he loved me. He wrote sonnets about me, Sonnets 127 through 152. He wrote of my dun breasts and my black wires of hair in Sonnet 130, and my grey cheeks in Sonnet 132. And in Sonnet 132, he wrote of my eyes:

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain
Have put on black, and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain; (Davies “Lady”)

          But it wasn’t just my looks that Shakespeare wrote about. Oh, no, “[I] was the inspiration for [his] most sexually graphic sonnets.” I was “anchored in a bay where all men ride”  in Sonnet 137. Sonnet 142 proclaimed my business and his love:

And sealed false bonds, of love as oft as mine,
Robbed others’ beds’ revenues of their rents.
Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov'st those… (Davies “Lady”)

Oh yes, he quite loved me, his sin.
          But who am I, this dark lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets? I am but a Negro whore who goes about her business in London. An unknown woman in your time. Some say that I’m Mary Fitton or Lucy Morgan, both ladies-in-waiting to the Queen. Maybe I’m Mrs. John Davenant, mother of William Davenant, Shakespeare’s illegitimate son (Mabillard). My identity is as lost to you as that of the young man, and it shall not be given from my mouth.
          There were 154 sonnets written by Shakespeare, all but two of them written either to the young man or to me. The young man and myself, the identities of whom are both lost forever. We live on forever through those sonnets exactly how Shakespeare saw us, but none shall ever know the truth of the young man or myself, the dark lady.


 


Davies, Nigel. "The Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s Sonnets." The Place 2 Be. 23 April 2004 <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/4081/DarkLady.html>.

Davies, Nigel. "The Young Man of Shakespeare’s Sonnets." The Place 2 Be. 29 April 2004 <www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/4081/YoungMan.html>.

Johnson, Ian. "A Note on Shakespeare’s Sonnets." 27 April 2004 <http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/eng366/sonnets.htm>.

Mabillard, Amanda. “The Sonnets and Poems.” Shakespeare’s Sonnets FAQ. Shakespeare Online. 27 April 2004 <http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/sonnetsfaq.html>.

“Sonnets.” Shakespeare’s World and Work. 3 vols. Ed. John F. Andrews. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001. 92-95.

“Sonnets | Who Is the `Young Man' Addressed in the Sonnets?” ENotes. 23 April 2004  <http://www.enotes.com/sonnets/440>.