The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Seventy-Four The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 2

I stayed once at the house of the second candidate. She is rather more interesting.

Her name was Jane Davenant, and she was the wife of an Oxford innkeeper who became eventually the Mayor of that city. The Davenants kept the Tavern Inn, in Cornmarket Street. Shakespeare often stayed at this house on his journeys between London and Stratford - that is, when he took his preferred way through Woodstock and High Wycombe instead of riding via Banbury and Aylesbury, two towns he always avoided if he could. When we played before the Mayor and Corporation of Oxford on 9th October 1605 our whole Company lodged at the Tavern Inn, and I slept in a chamber the walls of which were adorned with an interlacing pattern of vines and flowers, and along the top a painted frieze which exhorted me to FEAR GOD ABOVE ALL THING, and I saw Mrs Davenant for myself, and she had dark hair.

But so do half the women in the world, and it is only because the Queen was fair that Mr Shakespeare ever pretended dark hair was out of fashion. Anyway, as we shall see, he meant something more when he harped upon his mistress being black.

Jane Davenant's claim to be the Dark Lady rests on the word of her son, Sir William Davenant, our present Poet Laureate, who decided some years ago to proclaim among his friends that the melancholy innkeeper (no one ever saw him smile) could not have been his father, and that William Shakespeare was. Please notice he said nothing of this until Shakespeare was dead. Please notice also that he was entirely silent on the subject until he had lost his nose as the result of mercury treatment for the pox. If he ever looked like Shakespeare he assuredly does not now, though of course no one says any such thing out of pity for the fellow.

Davenant is to be blamed for the introduction of female players to the English stage, and other things including movable scenery. His Gondibert is unreadable, which I think it would not be if William Shakespeare's blood really flowed in his veins. You will say these are matters of opinion; so here is a fact. Davenant was not born until 1606, by which time the events of the sonnets were long past. I suppose that Mr S could have rekindled an old passion, and fathered his alleged bastard in that autumn when our Company played Oxford; but if he did then it was no more than an epilogue to the whole affair.

There is, however, a curious work called Willobie his Avisa, or The True Picture of a Modest Maid, and of a Chaste and Constant Wife which might be used to link Jane Davenant with the Dark Lady. This piece, a farrago of prose and verse, was published in 1594, and signed with the pseudonym Hadrian Dorrell. From a chance remark of Mr Shakespeare's, I know that its author was really a Henry Willoughby, a connection by marriage of Shakespeare's Warwickshire friend Thomas Russell, an overseer of the poet's will, in which he was left PS5. In short, the thing was written by someone who might have heard some gossip about Shakespeare. I'd put it no higher than that. Whatever, the pamphlet gave serious offence to somebody with influence (Rizley?), even though it must always have been hard to understand. It was banned and burnt before the last century was out.

That, friends, is why Pickleherring has a copy, here, in this 74th box. The thing is in essence a complicated libel upon the wife of an innkeeper. This woman is so beautiful that she draws to the inn a crowd of importunate gallants. But she is apparently so virtuous that she drives them all away, even threatening to murder one of them, a nobleman, rather than permit him to besmirch her honour. This perfect spouse is a rare bird (rara Avis or Avisa), but the author says a contrary meaning must be given to his epithets. Beneath the exterior of a Lucrece the reader is invited to see a wanton: Let Lucres-Avis be thy name.

Enter Henrico Willobego. He is conquered at first sight of Avisa, and begins to pine, until his friend WS, who has undergone the same torments, counsels him with wisdom born of experience. Amongst other wooden stuff, WS says this to his 'friend Harry':

She is no saint, she is no nun:

I think in time she may be won.

Awful crap, but I suppose it does recall two lines from Titus Andronicus:

She is a woman, therefore may be wooed;

She is a woman, therefore may be won.

Since WS is described as 'the old player', and Henrico Willobego quotes proverbs belonging to the collection made by Rizley's tutor John Florio, I suppose identification of these two men with Shakespeare and Southampton is not far-fetched. And Avisa might well be Mrs Davenant. After all, the nest of this 'Britain bird' that 'outflies them all', is clearly indicated: 'See yonder house where hangs the badge of England's saint'. The tavern kept by the Davenants had the red-cross shield of St George hanging outside its front door.

The allegory enacted in Willobie his Avisa is, all the same, much more obscure and difficult to follow than my summary may be leading you to think. Here, let me quote verbatim what seems the most relevant passage in it, and you can make up your own minds:

Henrico Willobego. Italo-Hispalensis.

H. W. being sodenly infected with the contagion of a fantasticall fit, at the first sight of A, pyneth a while in secret griefe, at length not able any longer to indure the burning heate of so fervent a humour, bewrayeth the secresy of his disease unto his familiar friend W. S. who not long before had tryed the curtesy of the like passion, and was now newly recovered of the like infection; yet finding his frend let bloud in the same vaine, he took pleasure for a tyme to see him bleed, & in steed of stopping the issue, he inlargeth the wound, with the sharpe rasor of a willing conceit, perswading him that he thought it a matter very easy to be compassed, & no doubt with payne, diligence & some cost in time to be obtayned. Thus this miserable comforter comforting his frend with an impossibilitie, eyther for that he now would secretly laugh at his frends folly, that had given occasion not long before unto others to laugh at his owne, or because he would see whether an other could play his part better than himselfe, & in vewing a far off the course of this loving Comedy, he determined to see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor, then it did for the old player. But at length this Comedy was like to have growen to a Tragedy, by the weake & feeble estate that H. W. was brought unto, by a desperate vewe of an impossibility of obtaining his purpose, til Time & Necessity, being his best Phisitions brought him a plaster, if not to heale, yet in part to ease his maladye. In all which discourse is lively represented the unrewly rage of unbrydeled fancy, having the raines to rove at liberty, with the dyvers & sundry changes of affections & temptations, which Will, set loose from Reason, can devise, &c.

The part of this which rings most true to me is that WS does not leap to the aid of his afflicted friend, but rather 'took pleasure for a tyme to see him bleed'. The late Mr Shakespeare was not always gentle.

From my own observation at the Tavern Inn I can report that Mrs Jane Davenant was a woman of great beauty and a sprightly wit. Mr Shakespeare afforded her every courtesy in public, and the degree of their intimacy would have struck strangers as in no way improper, yet I admit that I can entertain without too much difficulty the thought that he might have shared her bed from time to time. Perhaps that's why her husband looked so miserable?

The truth is that William Shakespeare, when not at home with his wife in Stratford, did not live a life of perfect chastity. He was never debauched, but took pleasure where pleasure was offered. His couplings of this kind were mostly ephemeral. There is, for example, a story I picked up from John Manningham of the Middle Temple, which I can well believe because of the wit in it. This concerns a lady of some breeding who had seen Dick Burbage playing Richard III, and fallen enamoured of more than his bunch-back. She made an assignation with him on leaving the playhouse. Burbage was to call upon her that night, announcing himself at her door in the name of his part. Mr Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and at his game before Burbage appeared on the scene. Then, message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made: 'William the Conquerer came before Richard III!'

To be brief with Jane Davenant, as perhaps many men were, I can believe that she is Avisa, but I once heard her sing and she was deaf to tunes. It passes credence that she could have played well on the virginals. Believe me, reader, she was not the Dark Lady of the sonnets. Who was? Be patient. I shall give you my best suggestion soon.