e, after
reproaching his 'traitres vers' with having untruthfully described his
siren as a beauty, concludes:

'Ja si long temps faisant d'un Diable vn Ange
Vous m'ouurez l'oeil en l'iniuste louange,
Et m'aueuglez en l'iniuste tourment.

With this should be compared Shakespeare's Sonnet cxliv., lines 9-10.

And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell.

A conventional sonnet or extravagant vituperation, which Drummond of
Hawthornden translated from Marino (_Rime_, 1602, pt. i. p. 76), is
introduced with grotesque inappropriateness into Drummond's collection of
'sugared' sonnets (see pt. i. No. xxxv: Drummond's _Poems_, ed. W. C.
Ward, i. 69, 217).

{123} The theories that all the sonnets addressed to a woman were
addressed to the 'dark lady,' and that the 'dark lady' is identifiable
with Mary Fitton, a mistress of the Earl of Pembroke, are baseless
conjectures. The extant portraits of Mary Fitton prove her to be fair.
The introduction of her name into the discussion is solely due to the
mistaken notion that Shakespeare was the _protege_ of Pembroke, that most
of the sonnets were addressed to him, and that the poet was probably
acquainted with his patron's mistress. See Appendix VII. The
expressions in two of the vituperative sonnets to the effect that the
disdainful mistress had 'robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents'
(cxlii. 8) and 'in act her bed-vow broke' (clii. 37) have been held to
imply that the woman denounced by Shakespeare was married. The first
quotation can only mean that she was unfaithful with married men, but
both quotations seem to be general phrases of abuse, the meaning of which
should not be pressed closely.

{127} 'Lover' and 'love' in Elizabethan English were ordinary synonyms
for 'friend' and 'friendship.' Brutus opens his address to the citizens
of Rome with the words, 'Romans, countrymen, and _lovers_,' and
subsequently describes Julius Caesar as 'my best _lover_' (_Julius
Caesar_, III. ii. 13-49). Portia, when referring to Antonio, the bosom
friend of her husband Bassanio, calls him 'the bosom _lover_ of my lord'
(_Merchant of Venice_, III. iv. 17). Ben Jonson in his letters to Donne
commonly described himself as his correspondent's 'ever true _lover_;'
and Drayton, writing to William Drummond of Hawthornden, informed him
that an admirer of his literary work was in love with him. The word
'love' was habitually a