Emilia Lanier: The Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Research Paper Example

Introduction and Thesis

For long centuries, two distinct, yet inextricably connected, mysteries have confounded the literary world.   They are the actual identities of the “Fair Youth” and the “Dark Lady”, the chief protagonists, other than the poet/narrator, in William Shakespeare’s sonnets.   As the sonnets reflect a painful and complex triangle existing between the poet, the young man, and the dark woman, it is inevitable that theories as to the identity of one are employed to isolate the other.

Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, is generally regarded by scholars as the youth.  Virtually everything regarding his life conforms to his role within the verses; he was fair, privileged, and quite young at the time of the commencement of the sonnets.  Two other elements greatly support this assertion.  The first is that Southampton, once a ward of Elizabeth’s powerful minister William Cecil, evinced a reckless character and was reluctant to settle down and carry on the family line.  This is perfectly in keeping with the relentless exhortations in the sonnets that the youth do so, for the sake of posterity.   Then, there is the inescapable matter of his connection to Shakespeare himself.  Only two letters exist from the author, and both are submissive appeals to the young lord for patronage.  It is, in fact, very likely that Southampton did assist the young Shakespeare financially, which was a more than suitable, and typical, arrangement of the period.

As for the lady in question, candidates have come and gone in scholarly favor.  However, the unearthing of a diary in 1973 by Shakespearean scholar A. L. Rowse brought extraordinary new evidence to light, even as that scholar’s reputation as both an ardent Southampton proponent and overt confidence in his own theories have diminished what he sought to establish.  Nonetheless, when all the facts and suppositions are examined, it seems most probable that Emilia Bassano Lanier, daughter of an Elizabethan court musician, was indeed the “Dark Lady” who has eluded the world for centuries.

Summary

The “Dark Lady” makes her first appearance in Sonnet 127, and she remains an active presence through 152.   There is mystery and strangeness in her very introduction, which is seemingly oblique; it is here that the poet first refers to both the fact of her being “his mistress”, as well as to her “raven black” eyes (Shakespeare, Sonnet 127, line 8), but little more is said. Quite simply, she suddenly appears, and as a discordant element.   In no time, her role in the life of the poet, as reflected in the verses, is uniformly conflicted and overtly sexual in nature.   The poet experiences ecstasy with her, but the price is exorbitant and painful.   She is, in a word, no good: “…worser spirit a woman coloured ill/ To win me soon to hell, my female evil” (Sonnet 144,  lines 4-5).   By Sonnet 146, the circumstances are dire.  This dark-haired and raven-eyed woman is not merely using her sexual hold over the poet to drive him mad, she is as well conducting a relationship with the “Fair Youth” exalted by the poet in earlier verses.   The poet fears, in fact, that she has infected his young friend with a venereal disease.

This is all highly specific content for a series of poetic verses.   Throughout history, scholars have sought to assert that only the poet’s genius is at work in these poems; as a master playwright, he was simply creating characters and a dynamic in sonnet form as he did on stage, and these arguments have been largely fueled by determinations that Shakespeare himself could not have been involved in so demeaning a triangle.   However, as Shakespearean scholar Martin Fido points out, these sonnets reflect, and connect to, the earlier series dedicated to the young man in a way that strongly indicates expression of actual, personal experience: “The individuality of the victim-poet’s response adds to our sense that this is cryptic autobiography” (1978,  p. 50).

Enter, then, the “Dark Lady” as living woman.   Premier Shakespearean scholar A. L. Rowse has championed the cause of Emilia Bassano Lanier as being the true “Dark Lady” since 1973, and ten years after he himself lamented that the woman’s identity would never be established.  What altered his view, and consequently that of the world’s, was the discovery of the notebooks of a Simon Forman, an Elizabethan physician who was as well a lover of Emilia (Fido, 1978,  p. 58).   By Forman’s account, Emilia was the illegitimate daughter of a court musician, Battista Bassanio (sic).  She was lovely and dark-haired, and, when she had become pregnant by the Lord Chamberlain, it was devised to marry her off to another musician, Alphonso Lanier.  Lanier himself was certainly acquainted with Shakespeare’s probable patron, the Earl of Southampton, having accompanied him on an expedition to the Azores.  From all of this and more, Rowse became convinced that Shakespeare, a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company of players in 1594, must have met and been captivated by this woman (Sarker, 2006,  p. 105).

What matters here, however, is not Rowse’s feelings or conjecture, but the surviving information.  The journals of Forman exist and have been documented, and the related information regarding Emilia Lanier has been established.   While it is certainly possible that the genuine, “Dark Lady” of the sonnets was a woman unknown to history, the fact remains that everything known about her confirms Emilia Lanier as the mysterious woman.  She was beautiful; she was noted for her dark hair and eyes, which were considered distinctive in the era;  she evinced an aggressively sexual character for a woman of her time even remotely connected to the aristocracy; she was present in court circles when Shakespeare himself was there; she enjoyed, if Forman is to be at all believed, somewhat tormenting the men with whom she carried on affairs; and Shakespeare, who enjoyed punning enormously, employs a variation of her maiden name in the character of Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice.   The chain of circumstances and realities is too strong to be dismissed.

Analysis

As was noted, there has been an extraordinary and long history of seemingly deliberate obfuscation, if not denial, regarding what is known about Shakespeare and its relation to his work.   The issue of an immoral woman as having victimized this greatest of artists has been so unendurable as to enable an outright refusal to consider the “Dark Lady” a genuine woman.  Moreover, and linked to this historical dismay, has been the discomfort caused by the sonnets lovingly directed to the “Fair Youth”.   For long centuries, those devoted to preserving the majesty of Shakespeare the man – because he was Shakespeare the artist – have had a hard time of it because of the sonnets.   No matter what direction was taken, it appeared, there was trouble; either the master was tormented by a homosexual relationship, and/or he was something of a disregarded sexual pawn in a game played by a cavalier boy and a corrupt woman.

Consequently, and throughout various eras following the artist’s death, seeking the identity of the “Dark Lady” was an ambition taken on halfheartedly, at best.   By the seventeenth century, idolatry of Shakespeare had reached epic proportions.   In a very real sense, and rather astoundingly, it has not subsided, as witnessed by the tides of Shakespearean enthusiasm generated by renowned Yale professor and author Harold Bloom: “’Shakespeare’, writes Bloom, ‘is my model and my mortal god’” (Kottman, 2009,  p. 20).   This continued reverence has, ironically, painted the greatest conveyor of human experience into an absurdly non-human corner, for de-sexualization has to be a consequence of this sort of worship: “How could such a high-culture hero bear to be sexualized at all? How could he ever stand up to the impossible universal history he is supposed to represent?” (Keevak, 2001,  p. 68).

Emilia Lanier has suffered obscurity for reasons beyond this disinclination, or refusal, to view Shakespeare as a sexually passionate man.   The real “Dark Lady” has been, like Shakespeare himself, the victim of the other dilemmas born from an inability to accept Shakespeare the man as Shakespeare the writer; that is to say, she cannot possibly achieve recognition when he himself has been denied it.   Even today, in the wake of a great deal of factual information regarding the life and activities of actor and playwright William Shakespeare of Stratford, authorship disputes are fiercely maintained.   As is well known, the “Oxfordians” still insist that Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was the true genius behind the plays.  Other candidates also still entertained by factions include Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe.   This is all of a piece with the unwillingness to believe that Shakespeare engaged in dubious sexual relations; the Oxfordians and others resent the notion that a man of limited background could have produced works of genius, as the “Stratfordians”, or those who do hold to Shakespeare himself as author, seek to elevate the man by, essentially, castrating him.   Both schools of thought, ironically, elevate Shakespeare out of existence.   He was not the relatively humble boy from the country and, if he was, he was too brilliant to indulge in physical pleasures and demean himself at the hands of a sinister, seductive “Dark Lady”.

Response

Before the admittedly questionable “name” of Emilia Lanier can be cleared, it is essential to examine the various misconceptions and mythologies of which Shakespeare has long been a victim.   Only by presenting the author as the man he was can her presence be validated.  Moreover, in this process, intent is irrelevant.  That is to say, the motivations to exalt behind the insubstantial conjectures in no way go to justifying them.

In regard to the authorship issue and the centuries of heated debate stemming from it, one fact resoundingly eclipses all argument in this arena.   Quite simply, no proponent of the Earl of Oxford, Bacon, Marlowe, or anyone else as the true writer of the works of Shakespeare has ever produced a single, plausible reason why these men would seek to deny the authorship, and allow it to be ascribed to a man it is known to have been at least a prominent actor of his time.   As concerns the first point, there was no aspect of the plays or the sonnets which would inspire a need for secrecy, or covert authorship.  The plays were not only immensely popular, they had the backing of the aristocracy at its highest levels.   It was, plainly speaking, no small thing for a troupe of actors to have the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain, or of the Queen herself, as Shakespeare’s company eventually did.  There is, in fact, a long-held tradition that the The Merry Wives of Windsor was written to please Elizabeth, who desired to see more of Falstaff (Guizot, 1855,  p. 348).   Ben Jonson himself, no great fan of Shakespeare the man, declared this to be a fact.  Whether this actually occurred is relatively unimportant, for what matters is that the prestige attached by a royal request was seen as probable under the circumstances.   There is nothing in any of this to dissuade a writer from identifying himself, and a great deal to encourage him to do so.

More specifically, the primary candidates for Shakespearean authorship most certainly would have gladly embraced the evident favor Shakespeare’s work received.   The records of performances given at court reflect a strong royal preference, and writers and actors could aspire to no higher sphere.  Edward de Vere’s life was marked by debt and recklessness, Marlowe’s brilliant career was cut short by murder, and Bacon spent his life and his own genius desperately seeking court patronage to pay his debts.   None of these men would conceivably credit such vastly successful work to another man.   Moreover, even if such a scenario was in place, there remains the problem of Shakespeare himself.   He lived in the time, this is absolutely known, and no pen name has ever been used that refers to an actual, other person, much less a prominent actor in a leading company.

With regard to the unwillingness to accept that Shakespeare was capable of relations with a woman as base as Emilia Lanier, there is further cause to dismiss the anti-Stratfordians.   That is to say, they resist crediting the actor with the plays because his education, it is felt, was too weak to be responsible for the work, just as Stratfordians feel the work is too fine to have emanated from a pleasure-seeking man.  The latter connects to the former in a mutually self-defeating way, for both viewpoints attempt to place a specific structure upon genius, or dictate how it may be expressed.   It is, in a word, a senseless kind of reasoning because genius intrinsically defies manufacture, material circumstance, and personal character.   The list of geniuses who have had minimal schooling and/or indulged in excessive lifestyles is long, and there is no need to point out examples.  The reality is that, as Shakespeare’s genius transcends most others, it has frequently not been permitted the freedom other genius has enjoyed.   He has been denied his affair with Emilia Lanier because he has been chained in by his greatness.

What is actually most striking in any dismissal of the “Dark Lady”, be she deemed Lanier or another, is how disproportionate the denial is to the potential reality.  That Shakespeare had intimate relations with a woman at court, and one who, by virtue of her musical heritage, most likely accompanied the players, is hardly damning to his character as a man.  It is known that he lived in London a good deal in his productive years, as it is known that he fathered children.  Moreover, Elizabethan morality was not particularly Puritan; adulterous relationships were frowned upon, but, as today, were relatively common.   As did many men of his station of the times, Shakespeare maintained distinctly separate presences.  In Stratford, he was an increasingly prosperous landowner, investor, and family man; in London, he was a prominent actor and playwright moving in, obviously, the theatrical, artistic, and court circles of a great metropolis.  That he never engaged in a relationship outside of his marriage, under the circumstances, would be the far greater mystery than that of his relationship with Emilia Lanier.

Debates

Counterargument 1

A potent argument against the mystery woman’s identity being that of Emilia Lanier, or indeed of any other factual woman, lies in how consistently negative Shakespeare is in his portrayal of her.  It must be remembered that Shakespeare the man, based on everything known regarding his  personal and business relations, was circumspect before anything else; nothing in his life indicates any kind of carelessness or interest in risk-taking.  This makes it all the more unlikely that he would consciously employ a living woman as the model for so unattractive a female in his verse.

That the poet is bewitched by the Dark Lady is clearly established, but every verse regarding her strongly points to how wrong this attachment is, by virtue of the lady’s bad character: “She is everything that should arouse revulsion…dishonest, unchaste, and faithless, she has infected Shakespeare with venereal disease” (Schoenfeldt, 2010,  p. 294).   William Shakespeare devoted his life to employing his genius to please, and to please in very high circles.  It is known that he sought to obtain a family coat of arms and establish the Shakespeare name within the distinct ranks of the gentleman.  There was no tangible need to do this; by 1596, when the patent was granted, he was quite established as a leading citizen.   Rather, the effort points to how important gentility was to Shakespeare.  That such a man would risk his own respectability in this way, in verses which enjoyed a wide circulation and which, dedicated to Southampton, were evidently aimed for the highest circles, is unreasonable.  As a poet, all he had to do was create a fictional temptress to meet the needs of the drama of his sonnets, and it may be then asserted that the “Dark Lady” was purely a fictional creation.

Refutation

The refutation to this argument may be found in the argument itself.   The reality is that, yes, the artist that Shakespeare was merely needed to concoct a mythical lady and make her as villainous as his purposes required.   Had he done so, however, it is highly unlikely that he would have described her in so uniquely specific a way.  The details presented regarding her strongly indicate a real, rather than a generic, woman; aside from the often-used references to the blackness of her eyes and hair, there is a more telling point in how he describes her voice (Weis, 2008,  p. 169).  It is unpleasant, yet the poet is drawn to it.  This kind of character detail is what is expected in the dimensional figures of Shakespeare’s plays, but a sonnet is a very different thing.   That Shakespeare deliberately drew so exact and unusual a portrait in a series of brief verses refutes any contention that the “Dark Lady” was a product of his imaginative genius.

Counterargument 2

It may be reasonably supposed that the true “Dark Lady” was not Emilia Lanier, but a girl named Mary Fitton.  Long before Lanier was introduced as a likely possibility, in fact, Fitton was largely held to be the Dark Lady by many Shakespearean scholars.  Certain elements of her life are known, and they more than respectably conform to the woman of the sonnets.  Fitton was a Maid of Honor to Elizabeth, and one who, like Lanier, had a child out of wedlock.  The father was William Herbert, a court figure who was also a patron of Shakespeare’s company.  Moreover, Mary Fitton is invariably described as being very lovely (Kemp, 2010,  p. 106), and Herbert’s Christian name works perfectly with the punning duality of “Wills” employed  in the sonnets.

Refutation

As made evident by George Bernard Shaw, one factor eliminates Mary Fitton from consideration: her coloring.   Mistress Fitton, it has been established, was a fair woman and, as Shaw somewhat gleefully notes, “Shakespear (sic) rubbed in the lady’s complexion in his sonnets mercilessly” (Shaw, 2008,  p. 109.)   As historians have frequently noted, this was no minor fixation on the poet’s part; black eyes and black hair were so unusual in Elizabethan days as to be oddities.  Moreover, there is no evidence whatsoever indicating that Shakespeare and Mary Fitton even knew one another, particularly given that Elizabeth was notoriously watchful in regard to the young ladies in attendance on her.   Emilia Lanier’s musical family and own talents render it far more likely that she would come in contact with an actor appearing so often at court.

Conclusion

In presenting the case for Emilia Lanier as the “Dark Lady”, it is, unfortunately, necessary to set aside her most powerful adherent.  A. L.  Rowse’s voice has been, and since 1973, the loudest and most vocal for the case of Emilia Lanier.   Rowse’s longstanding reputation for an aggressive, if not occasionally scurrilous, scholarly enthusiasm, however, actually damages his cause: “A. L. Rowse’s theory, presented…with much flourish and self-confidence, has been much doubted” (Le Comte, 1991,  p. 95).   If Othello loved not wisely but too well, Rowse has endorsed the case for Emilia Lanier in a similarly self-defeating manner.

It is equally essential, however, that whatever disfavor or critical judgment is bestowed upon Rowse does not of itself influence how the theory is seen.  Plainly, in the worlds of literary scholarship, there has always been a keen competitive spirit  Given the centuries-old mystery of the “Dark Lady”, it is inevitable that heated rivalries would result, as this aspect also likely contributes to the hubris of Rowse.  None of this, however, actually goes to discrediting Emilia Lanier as the most likely candidate for the Dark Lady.  The facts, ultimately, speak for themselves.  It is established that Emilia Bassano Lanier was present in court circles when Shakespeare was performing in London, and for the Queen; that the Bassano family was dark-complected, as evidenced by the exacting work of Martin Green in tracing the name, origin, and heraldry of it (2006,  p. 553);  that Emilia was sexually promiscuous, or seen as such by the standards of the day; and that, as a court figure and through the acquaintance of her husband with him, she would have had access to the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s “Fair Youth”.  After all the facts, suppositions, arguments, and obstacles are examined, there can be little doubt that Emilia Bassano Lanier was indeed Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady”, who has eluded the world for centuries.

References

Fido, M.  (1978.)  Shakespeare.  Maplewood, NJ: Hammond Incorporated.

Green, M. (October, 2006.)  Emilia Lanier IS the Dark Lady of the Sonnets.  English Studies, Vol. 87, No. 5. pp. 544-576.

Guizot, M. F. (1855.)  Shakespeare and His Times. New York, NY: Harper.

Keevak, M. (2001.)  Sexual Shakespeare: Forgery, Authorship, Portraiture. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.

Kemp, T.  D. (2006.)  Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Kottman, P. (2009.)  Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare: Disinheriting the Globe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Le Comte, E. (1991.)  Milton Re-Viewed: Ten Essays. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Sarker, S. K.  (2006.)  Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New Delhi, India: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors.

Schoenfeldt, M. (2010.)  A Companion to Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Chichester, UK: John Wiley &  Sons, Ltd.

Shakespeare, W.  (2004.)  Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New York, NY: Washington Square Press.

Shaw, G. B. (2008.)  Misalliance, the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and Fanny’s First Play. Rockville, MD: Wildside Press LLC.

Weis, R. (2008.)  Shakespeare Unbound: Decoding a Hidden Life. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Co., LLC.