Story, expanded text, published 1921
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (Expanded Version): Characters
Characters
The narrator
The convert who loses faith
A young Oxford man who begins sure that the Sonnets were written to Lord Pembroke and is won over by Cyril's theory in a single evening. He spends two months building a life for Willie Hughes out of poems, diaries and old plays, and comes to feel it is his own story. The instant he sets it all down for Erskine, his belief drains away, yet the forged portrait still tempts him at the end.
Erskine
The keeper of the portrait
George Erskine, a man of forty with a house in Birdcage Walk, was Cyril Graham's devoted friend at Eton and Trinity. He exposes the forgery, never recovers from Cyril's death, and rejects the theory for years. Converted by the narrator's letter, he adds an argument of his own, that Hughes acted under a stage name, and goes to Germany to prove it. Dying at Cannes, he writes a letter pretending he will kill himself for Willie Hughes.
Cyril Graham
The theorist and forger
An orphan brought up by his grandfather, Lord Crediton, and in Erskine's words 'very fascinating, and very foolish, and very heartless'. A fine rider and fencer, languid and vain, he loves poetry and acting, plays Rosalind at Cambridge and longs for the stage. He works out the Willie Hughes theory, has a portrait painted to convince Erskine, and shoots himself when the forgery is found out. The world believes his death was an accident.
Willie Hughes
The imagined boy actor
The boy actor of Cyril's theory, supposed player of Shakespeare's heroines and 'onlie begetter' of the Sonnets. He exists only as a reading of the poems and a face in a forged portrait. In this version the narrator gives him a whole life: apprenticeship to Shakespeare, a desertion to Marlowe, an affair with the dark woman, perhaps Miranda in The Tempest, and a death among English players in Germany.
The dark woman
The woman between them
The woman of Sonnets CXXVII to CLII, as the narrator reconstructs her: older than Shakespeare, married, olive-skinned and black-haired, skilled on the virginals and of evil repute. She falls for Willie Hughes, and Shakespeare's feigned courtship of her turns into real enthralment. The narrator never learns her name, but in Chapter V he pictures her masked in a side box at the Globe, waiting for the curtain.
Edward Merton
The painter of the forgery
A pale, clever young artist, 'as poor as a church mouse', whose silver-point drawings Erskine buys in a Holborn print-shop. Looking through Merton's portfolio, Erskine finds a drawing of the Mr W. H. portrait. Merton grows red and denies everything, but his wife, who is also his model, gives the secret away: it was done for Cyril Graham.
Lady Erskine
The grieving mother
Erskine's mother, who has known for months that her son was dying of consumption. In deep mourning at the Hotel d'Angleterre in Cannes, she knows nothing of the Willie Hughes theory or of the letter that brought the narrator there. She gives him the portrait that George begged her to pass on, and her tears fall on his hand as he takes it.