“O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?”
In the same sonnet he again dwells upon her “strength”: she was bold, too, to unreason, and of unbridled tongue, for, “twice forsworn herself,” she had yet urged his “amiss,” though guilty of the same fault. What he admired most in her was force of character. Perhaps the old saying held in her case: ex forti dulcedo; perhaps her confident strength had abandonments more flattering and complete than those of weaker women; perhaps in those moments her forceful dark face took on a soulful beauty that entranced his exquisite susceptibility; perhaps—but the suppositions are infinite.
Though a lover and possessed by his mistress Shakespeare was still an artist. In the sonnets he brings out her overbearing will, boldness, pride—the elemental force of her nature; in the play, on the other hand, while just mentioning her “power,” he lays the chief stress upon the cunning wiles and faithlessness of her whose trade was love. But just as Cleopatra has power, so there can be no doubt of the wily cunning—“the warrantise of skill”—of the sonnet-heroine, and no doubt her faithlessness was that “just cause of hate” which Shakespeare bemoaned.
It is worth while here to notice his perfect comprehension of the powers and limits of the different forms of his art. Just as he has used the sonnets in order to portray certain intimate weaknesses and maladies of his own nature that he could not present dramatically without making his hero ridiculously effeminate, so also he used the sonnets to convey to us the domineering will and strength of his mistress—qualities which if presented dramatically would have seemed masculine-monstrous.
By taking the sonnets and the play together we get an excellent portrait of Shakespeare's mistress. In person she was probably tall and vain of her height, as Cleopatra is vain of her superiority in this respect to Octavia, with dark complexion, black eyebrows and hair, and pitch-black eyes that mirrored emotion as the lakelet mirrors the ever-changing skies; her cheeks are “damask'd white”; her breath fragrant with health, her voice melodious, her movements full of dignity—a superb gipsy to whom beauty may be denied but not distinction.
If we have a very good idea of her person we have a still better idea of her mind and soul. I must begin by stating that I do not accept implicitly Shakespeare's angry declarations that his mistress was a mere strumpet. A nature of great strength and pride is seldom merely wanton; but the fact stands that Shakespeare makes a definite charge of faithlessness against his mistress; she is, he tells us, “the bay where all men ride”; no “several plot,” but “the wide world's common place.” The accusation is most explicit. But if it were well founded why should he devote two sonnets (135 and 136) to imploring her to be as liberal as the sea and to receive his love-offering as well as the tributes of others?
“Among a number one is reckon'd none
Then in the number let me pass untold.”
It is plain that Mistress Fitton drew away from Shakespeare after she had given herself to his friend, and this fact throws some doubt upon his accusations of utter wantonness. A true “daughter of the game,” as he says in “Troilus and Cressida,” is nothing but “a sluttish spoil of opportunity” who falls to Troilus or to Diomedes in turn, knowing no reserve. It must be reckoned to the credit of Mary Fitton, or to her pride, that she appears to have been faithful to her lover for the time being, and able to resist even the solicitings of Shakespeare. But her desires seem to have been her sole restraint, and therefore we must add an extraordinary lewdness to that strength, pride, and passionate temper which Shakespeare again and again attributes to her. Her boldness is so reckless that she shows her love for his friend even before Shakespeare's face; she knows no pity in her passion, and always defends herself by attacking her accuser. But she is cunning in love's ways and dulls Shakespeare's resentment with “I don't hate you.” Unwilling perhaps to lose her empire over him and to forego the sweetness of his honeyed flatteries, she blinded him to her faults by occasional caresses. Yet this creature, with the soul of a strumpet, the tongue of a fishwife and the “proud heart” of a queen, was the crown and flower of womanhood to Shakespeare, his counterpart and ideal. Hamlet in love with Cleopatra, the poet lost in desire of the wanton—that is the tragedy of Shakespeare's life.
In this wonderful world of ours great dramatic writers are sure to have dramatic lives. Again and again in his disgrace Antony cries:
“Whither hast thou led me, Egypt?”