Mistress Davenant, the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Demonstrating the Indentity of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and the Authorship and ... of Willobie His Avisa (Classic Reprint)

Outlining new facts concerning Shakespeare, his work, and his relations with certain of his contemporaries IN the preface to a book published in 1903, entitled Shakespeare and the Rival Poet of theS onnets, I suggested certain lines of Shakespearean investigation which seemed to promise more definite knowledge of Shake speare the man, and, through the more intimate conception thus possibly to be gained of his personality, a clearer under standing of his lifes work than had yet been realised either by textual criticism or antiquarian research. In that preface I wrote as follows: The research of text-students of the works of Shakespeare, undertaken with the object of unveiling the mystery which envelops the poets life and personality, has added little or nothing of actual proof to the bare outlines which hearsay, tradition, and the spare records of his time have given us. It has, however, resulted in evolving several plausible con jectures, which, if followed and carried to the point of proof, would lend some form and semblance of his personality to these outlines, and materially assist in visualising for us the actual man. In this class of conjectural knowledge I would place the following questions: The question of the personal theory of theS onnets, with its attendant questions of order and chronology, and the indentity of the three or four figures, the Patron, The Rival Poet, The Dark Lady, and The Mr. W. H. of theD
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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