in any way but one. The mistress of Shakespeare, fascinated by
the beauty and brilliant qualities of his friend, took advantage of the
poet's absence to win that facile heart, so incapable of resisting the
charms of woman and the tongue of flattery;

And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed? (41.)

His friend's loss was the greater to the poet, for, although he loved
with passionate strength, it was against his conscience and his reason.
Such a love, he says, is "enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;"
"Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream."

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leadeth to this hell. (129.)

Nor does he mince matters in directly addressing her. She is a brunette,
with black eyes and black hair, yet black in nothing except her deeds,
which have given her an evil reputation. She has sealed false bonds of
love as often as he, and is twice forsworn, having deceived both her
husband and her lover. She is as cruel as if she had that transcendent
beauty which in reality she only possesses in his doting eyes. He knows
that her heart is "a bay where all men ride," and yet love persuades him
to believe her true.

Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?

She is his "worser spirit," tempting him to ill--his "false plague,"
whom he knows to be "as black as hell, as dark as night," though he has
sworn her fair and true. His friend's name is Will also, and Sonnets
135, 136 contain a play upon their names:

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy "Will,"
And "Will" to boot, and "Will" in overplus.

Only love my name, he says to her, and then you will still love me, for
_my_ name too is "Will."

Such are the three actors in this tragedy of sin and sorrow and remorse;
and the more we read these wonderful poems, and perceive the intense
passion that throbs through them, the nearer we seem to get to the great
heart of Shakespeare, the real inner life of that man of whose outer
personality we know so little. We see him wounded to the quick by his
dearest friend, yet weighing the sin of that friend in the balance of
divinest mercy as he acknowledges the strength of the temptation, and,
while he does not extenuate the sin, extends a loving pardon to the
sinner. He knows weakness of his own soul: he himself struggles in the
toils of an unworthy passion