It’s best to read ‘A Lover’s Complaint (I)’ Part 42 first
A Lover’s Complaint (continued)
The young woman – who represents the younger Shakespeare – explains to the ‘reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh’ – who represents the older Shakespeare, examining his younger self.
‘But, woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit–it was to gain my grace
Of one by nature’s outwards so commended,
That maidens’ eyes stuck over all his face:
Love lack’d a dwelling, and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was new lodged and newly deified.
‘Grace’ = ‘sexual favours’.
The young woman confesses she was far too young when she was wooed by a young man who wanted to go to bed with her – a youth so handsome that every woman’s gaze was fixed on him. Love needed somewhere to live – so chose the young man as her habitation and so Love became all the more powerful as a Goddess.
This echoes Shakespeare’s Sonnets about Harry.
Sonnet 19. (20):
A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
[Hews is a coded reference to Harry’s initials and his title: Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton]
It is also reminiscent of Shakespeare’s description of Harry in Sonnet 114 (93) when he talks about Love dwelling in Harry’s face.
‘But heaven in thy creation did decree/That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell’.
‘His browny locks did hang in crooked curls;
And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.
What’s sweet to do, to do will aptly find:
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind,
For on his visage was in little drawn
What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.
‘Sawn’ = ‘seen’.
His long brown hair would be blown onto his lips by the wind – and everyone who saw him was enchanted by him: his face seemed Paradise in miniature.
This is very similar to the description of the beautiful young knight, Musidorus, in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia:
‘His fair auburn hair which he ware at great length and gave at that time a delightful show with being stirred up and down with the breath of a gentle wind’.
Harry hero-worshipped Sidney and based his own appearance on the two handsome young princes in ‘Arcadia’.
Also, in All’s Well that Ends Well, Helena – who also represents Shakespeare’s younger self – talks of Bertram’s/Harry’s ‘curls’.
‘Small show of man was yet upon his chin;
His phoenix down began but to appear
Like unshorn velvet on that termless skin
Whose bare out-bragg’d the web it seem’d to wear:
Yet show’d his visage by that cost more dear;
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt
If best were as it was, or best without.
He only had a tiny show of facial hair – and the woman/Shakespeare compares it to phoenix-feathers.
Note: Shakespeare has already likened Harry to the fabulous Phoenix Bird in The Phoenix and the Turtle.
The bareness of his chin highlighted the stubble – and people argued as to which was more attractive – the young man with hair or without.
Harry also was famous, in his youth, for his small show of facial hair:
Between 22nd – 28th September, 1592, Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford with Harry in attendance. John Sanford afterwards wrote of him in Latin: ‘There was present no one more comely, no young man more outstanding in learning , although his mouth scarcely yet blooms with tender down’.
‘His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm
As oft ‘twixt March and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, untidy though they be.
His rudeness so with his authoriz’d youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.
‘Free’ = ‘generous’. ‘Authoriz’d’ = ‘granted allowances’. [The stress should be on ‘thor’]. ‘Livery’ = ‘dress up’.
He was as morally beautiful (or seemed to be) as he was physically beautiful for he had the pure, soft speech of a girl – and was generous and liberal. But he could get angry with people – but it was like the ‘rough winds’ of early spring and, consequently, still sweet. However, what he was doing was masking his deceitfulness with a show of truth.
These are similar to Shakespeare’s observations of Harry. In Sonnet 75. (70) Shakespeare writes:
If some suspect of ill maskt not thy show,/Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts should’st owe.
And in Sonnet 114 (93) Shakespeare writes:
But heaven in thy creation did decree/That in they face sweet love should ever dwell/What ere thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be/Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.’
‘Well could he ride, and often men would say
‘That horse his mettle from his rider takes:
Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,
What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop
he makes!’
And controversy hence a question takes,
Whether the horse by him became his deed,
Or he his manage by the well-doing steed.
He was a great horseman. Some people say the horse takes its qualities from the horseman – others that the horseman takes his qualities from the horse.
‘But quickly on this side the verdict went:
His real habitude gave life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament,
Accomplish’d in himself, not in his case:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purposed trim
Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.
‘Appertainings’ = ‘belongings’. ‘Case’ = ‘outward clothing’. ‘Trim’ = ‘trappings’.
But all were finally of the opinion that it was the young man’s inner qualities that made him attractive, not his outward dress. External ornamentations helped, but they took their beauty from the young man rather than gave it to him.
‘So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kinds of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will:
So his conversation was skilfully manipulative. He could argue any case and tailored his conversations to the needs of his hearers. So he managed to master people of every sort of persuasion by his cunning arts.
This is reminiscent of Harry’s manipulative behaviour in his love-triangle with Shakespeare and Amelia Bassano – the Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets. Harry wanted Shakespeare to be his lover – but Harry wanted to be loyal to Harry’s mother – Mary Second, Countess of Southampton….
……because:
(1) She was Shakespeare’s employer and
(2) Shakespeare’s brief had been to ‘heterosexualise’ Harry with the seventeen ‘Birthday Sonnets’
To gain Shakespeare’s love, Harry seduced Amelia when Shakespeare asked Harry to plead his love cause with her.
At this stage, Harry was not interested in women at all!
Shakespeare refers to this in Sonnet 41 (40) when he criticises Harry for stealing his mistress:
But yet be blam’d, if thou this self deceivest
By wilful taste of what they self refusest
‘Self’ here, as we have seen, can = ‘penis’. Shakespeare is indicating that by bedding Amelia, Harry is going against his natural gay instincts. he is being emotionally manipulative – just as the male lover in A Lover’s Complaint is.
‘That he did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted,
To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain
In personal duty, following where he haunted:
Consents bewitch’d, ere he desire, have granted;
And dialogued for him what he would say,
Ask’d their own wills, and made their wills obey.
Everyone was in love with him no matter what their ages. He enchanted both sexes: they thought about him or LITERALLY followed him about. People submitted to him sexually before he even asked them to go to bed with him. They anticipated what he would say – and said it themselves – and forced their genitals (‘their wills’) to comply with what he wanted.
This is very similar to Shakespeare’s description of Harry in Sonnet 19. (20)
‘Which steals men’s eyes and women’s soul amazeth’.
Also in Sonnet 117 (57) Shakespeare describes Harry in exactly the same tones as the besotted people described in this stanza:
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your Will,
(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.
XXX
A Lover’s Complaint continued.
‘Many there were that did his picture get,
To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind;
Like fools that in th’ imagination set
The goodly objects which abroad they find
Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assign’d;
And labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them
Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them:
‘Moe’ = ‘more’.
Many people had miniatures and portraits of the young man to (1) Please their sight (2) Masturbate over. ‘Eyes’ can = ‘testicles’. Or please their minds, thinking about the young man in his absence.
These people are like idiots who see gardens and stately homes and imagine they own them and work, in their imagination to improve them more than the true gout-ridden owners.
Shakespeare here is describing himself!
We know from Sonnet 103 (46) that Harry gave Shakespeare a miniature of himself that Shakespeare took on tour with him.
Shakespeare also thought he ‘owned’ his lover, Harry and sought to improve his character – much more than Harry himself – who had suffered from ‘swelling in the legs’ in his imprisonment in the Tower and so was ‘gouty’.
‘So many have, that never touch’d his hand,
Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart.
My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,
And was my own fee-simple, not in part,
What with his art in youth, and youth in art,
Threw my affections in his charmed power,
Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.
‘Fee-simple’ = ‘my absolute possession’ – a legal term about land.
Many people, who never even touched the young man, thought he was in love with them. I, who was completely free and my own mistress, because of his manipulation (1) As a young man and (2) As one who was only beginning to be a manipulator, succumbed to his magic and gave him my virginity.
Shakespeare is here talking openly about his relation ship with Harry. He his ‘freedom’ when he first met Harry. He had started to forge a career in the theatre – howbeit poorly paid and tough – by leading Lord Strange’s Company in Lancashire. But he was enchanted by Harry – and allowed him to dominate him emotionally and physically. He allowed himself to be the passive partner in the relationship in every sense of the word. The image of the ‘flower’ being taken suggests that Shakespeare could be the passive partner in the relationship.
This idea is confirmed by Sonnet 106 (50):
My grief lies onwards and my joy behind
And Sonnet 70 (31):
And they, all they, hast all the all of me
And Sonnet 43 (129)
Before a joy propos’d, behind a dream.
To read ‘A Lover’s Complaint (III), Part 44, please click: HERE
The Shakespeare Code 
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