Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters, Volume I. | Page 8

the
charming dialogue between the Duke and the disguised Viola in Act ii.,
scene 4, of Twelfth Night, have been cited as involving some reference
to the Poet's own case, or as having been suggested by what himself
had experienced of the evils resulting from the wedlock of persons
"misgraffed in respect of years." There was never any thing but sheer
conjecture for this notion. Rowe mentions nothing of the kind; and we
may be sure that his candour would not have spared the Poet, had
tradition offered him any such matter. As for the passages in question, I
know no reason for excepting them from the acknowledged purity and
disinterestedness of the Poet's representations; where nothing is more
remarkable, or more generally commended, than his singular aloofness
of self; his perfect freedom from every thing bordering upon egotism.
Our Mr. White is especially hard upon the Poet's wife, worrying up the
matter against her, and fairly tormenting the poor woman's memory.
Now the facts about the marriage are just precisely as I have stated
them. I confess they are not altogether such as I should wish them to
have been; but I can see no good cause why prurient inference or
speculation should busy itself in going behind them. If, however,
conjecture must be at work on those facts, surely it had better run in the
direction of charity, especially as regards the weaker vessel. I say
weaker vessel, because in this case the man must in common fairness
be supposed to have had the advantage at least as much in natural
strength of understanding as the woman had in years. And as
Shakespeare was, by all accounts, a very attractive person, it is not
quite clear why she had not as good a right to lose her heart in his
company as he had to lose his in hers. Probably she was as much
smitten as he was; and we may well remember in her behalf, that love's
"favourite seat is feeble woman's breast"; especially as there is not a

particle of evidence that her life after marriage was ever otherwise than
clear and honourable. And indeed it will do no hurt to remember in
reference to them both, how
"'Tis affirmed By poets skilled in Nature's secret ways, That Love will
not submit to be controlled By mastery."
In support of his view, Mr. White urges, among other things, that most
foul and wicked fling which Leontes, in his mad rapture of jealousy,
makes against his wife, in Act i. scene 2, of _The Winter's Tale_. He
thinks the Poet could not have written that and other strains of like
import, but that he was stung into doing so by his own bitter experience
of "sorrow and shame"; and the argument is that, supposing him to
have had such a root of bitterness in his life, he must have been
thinking of that while writing those passages. The obvious answer is,
To be sure, he must have been thinking of that; but then he must have
known that others would think of it too; and a reasonable delicacy on
his part would have counselled the withholding of any thing that he was
conscious might be applied to his own domestic affairs. Sensible men
do not write in their public pages such things as would be almost sure
to breed or foster scandal about their own names or their own homes.
The man that has a secret cancer on his person will naturally be the last
to speak of cancers in reference to others. I can hardly think
Shakespeare was so wanting in a sense of propriety as to have written
the passages in question, but that he knew no man could say he was
exposing the foulness of his own nest. So that my inferences in the
matter are just the reverse of Mr. White's. As for the alleged need of
personal experience in order to the writing of such things, why should
not this hold just as well in regard, for instance, to Lady Macbeth's
pangs of guilt? Shakespeare's prime characteristic was, that he knew
the truth of Nature in all such things without the help of personal
experience.
Mr. White presumes, moreover, that Anne Shakespeare was a coarse,
low, vulgar creature, such as, the fascination of the honeymoon once
worn off, the Poet could not choose but loath and detest; and that his
betaking himself to London was partly to escape from her hated society.
This, too, is all sheer conjecture, and rather lame at that. That
Shakespeare was more or less separated from his wife for a number of
years, cannot indeed be questioned; but that he ever found or ever

sought relief or comfort in such separation, is what we have no warrant
for believing.