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16

The Portrait of Mr W. H.

[July

But him whom he could not hold by love, he would not hold by force. Willie Hughes became a member of Lord Pembroke's company, and, perhaps in the open yard of the Red Bull Tavern, played the part of King Edward's delicate minion. On Marlowe's death, he seems to have returned to Shakespeare, who, whatever his fellow-partners may have thought of the matter, was not slow to forgive the wilfulness and treachery of the young actor.

How well, too, had Shakespeare drawn the temperament of the stage-player! Willie Hughes was one of those

"That do not do the thing they most do show,Who, moving others, are themselves as stone."

He could act love, but could not feel it, could mimic passion without realising it.

"In many's looks the false heart's historyIs writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange,"

but with Willie Hughes it was not so. "Heaven," says Shakespeare, in a sonnet of mad idolatry—

"Heaven in thy creation did decreeThat in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be,Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell."

In his "inconstant mind" and his "false heart," it was easy to recognise the insincerity and treachery that somehow seem inseparable from the artistic nature, as in his love of praise, that desire for immediate recognition that characterises all actors. And yet, more fortunate in this than other actors, Willie Hughes was to know something of immortality. Inseparably connected with Shakespeare's plays, he was to live in them.

"Your name from hence immortal life shall have,Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:The earth can yield me but a common grave,When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.Your monument shall be my gentle verse,Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,And tongues to be your being shall rehearseWhen all the breathers of this world are dead."

There were endless allusions, also, to Willie Hughes's power over his audience,—the "gazers," as Shakespeare calls them; but perhaps the most perfect description of his wonderful mastery over dramatic art was in "The Lover's Complaint," where Shakespeare says of him:—

"In him a plentitude of subtle matter,Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,In either's aptness, as it best deceives,To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.

So on the tip of his subduing tongue,All kind of arguments and questions 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 the different skill, Catching all passions in his craft of will."

Once I thought that I had really found Willie Hughes in Eliza-