—to make me love thee more
The more I hear, and see just cause for hate?
He who wrote these and similar passages was certainly under the full and irresistible influence of female fascination. But who it was that thus ruled the universal heart and mighty spirit of our Shakspeare, we know not. She stands beside him a veiled and a nameless phantom. Neither dare we call in Fancy to penetrate that veil; for who would presume to trace even the faintest outline of such a being as Shakspeare could have loved?
I think it doubtful to whom were addressed those exquisite lines,
Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now! &c.[100]
but probably to this very person.
The Sonnets in which he alludes to his profession as an actor; where he speaks of the brand, "which vulgar scandal stamped upon his brow," and of having made himself "a motley to men's view,"[101] are undoubtedly addressed to Lord Southampton.
O, for my sake, do you with fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than publick means, which public manners breeds;
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd.
The last I shall remark, perhaps the finest of all, and breathing the very soul of profound tenderness and melancholy feeling, must, I think, have been addressed to a female.