Story, expanded text, published 1921
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (Expanded Version): Summary
Summary
Dining with Erskine in Birdcage Walk, the narrator defends Chatterton's forgeries as art, and Erskine asks what he would say of a young man who forged something to prove a theory. He brings out a panel portrait in the manner of Clouet: a youth of about seventeen in a black velvet doublet, his hand on a book open at the dedication of the Sonnets. The narrator, sure that the poems were written to Lord Pembroke, then hears the story of Cyril Graham, Erskine's friend at Eton and Trinity: an orphan left to a gruff grandfather, Lord Crediton, vain of his looks, graceful in everything, and the only perfect Rosalind Erskine ever saw.
One evening Cyril lays out his theory, worked out from the Sonnets alone. He disposes of Pembroke and Southampton on dates, portraits, rank and Christian names, waves aside the other guesses, and argues that the youth must be the boy actor for whom Shakespeare created Viola, Imogen, Juliet, Rosalind, Portia, Desdemona and Cleopatra. The first name, Will, comes from the punning sonnets, and the surname from the word 'Hews', printed with a capital and in italics in Sonnet XX. When weeks in church registers, the Dulwich papers and the Record Office produce nothing, Cyril returns from Warwickshire with the portrait, which he says he found clamped inside an old chest carved with the letters W. H.
Months later Erskine sees a drawing of the portrait in the portfolio of a poor young painter, Edward Merton, whose wife lets slip that it was done for Cyril. The friends quarrel, and the next morning Cyril shoots himself, leaving a letter that entrusts the theory to Erskine. Erskine thinks it unsound and warns the narrator off, but the narrator calls it the only perfect key to the Sonnets and walks home through St James's Park at dawn, in tears for Cyril.
Working through the Sonnets and a facsimile of the Quarto, the narrator finds the theory confirmed on every page. The word 'shadow' marks an actor; the marriage Shakespeare urges on the youth is marriage with his Muse, and the children he must beget are the parts he will play; the 'powerful rhyme' of Sonnet LV is Romeo and Juliet. He moves the rival poet from Chapman to Marlowe, who lured Hughes away to play Gaveston, and finds Hughes again in the false shepherd of A Lover's Complaint. He then sets the friendship in the Renaissance revival of Plato's Symposium, beside Michael Angelo and Cavalieri, Montaigne, and Sidney and Languet.
A musician called William Hewes at the deathbed of the Earl of Essex, and an actress and a playwright of the same surname, raise his hopes without proving anything. He starts a history of the boy actors in a vellum notebook, lists them by name, and defends them against the Puritans, Lady Martin and Mr Symonds, arguing that Shakespeare's heroines in male disguise exist because boys played them. He tells of a schoolboy seized for the Blackfriars stage in 1600, imagines how Shakespeare first found Hughes, and reads the poet's war on time as fear for a boy player's fading youth.
He then turns to the dark woman of Sonnets CXXVII to CLII, moves them to an earlier place in the sequence, and tells her story as he reads it: an older, married woman who falls for Willie Hughes, and whom Shakespeare courts with pretended passion to win back his friend, until the pretence becomes real. He finds echoes of the affair in Cranley's 'Amanda' and in Manningham's diary, dates the Sonnets by Love's Labour's Lost and 'Willobie his Avisa', and arranges the whole sequence as a drama in four acts. He imagines Hughes dying in the Civil War or of the Plague before settling on Germany, and a grave in a vineyard outside Nuremberg.
An Elizabethan's account of seeing his own grief acted in a comedy leads the narrator to reflect that art shows us our own souls, and he feels he has lived the whole romance, down to a seat at the Globe. After two months he writes Erskine a long, passionate letter, and the moment it is posted his belief is gone. Next morning he finds Erskine converted, now arguing that Hughes acted under a stage name, and they part with a shadow between them. Two years later a letter from Cannes says that Erskine will kill himself for Willie Hughes. The narrator arrives to learn from the English doctor that Erskine died of consumption, knowing he had only days to live. Lady Erskine gives him the portrait, and at times he still thinks there is a great deal to be said for the theory.
Chapter by chapter
SummaryAfter dinner in Birdcage Walk, Erskine shows the narrator a portrait of a beautiful youth with his hand on the dedication of the Sonnets. He tells how his friend Cyril Graham identified Mr W. H. as a boy actor, Willie Hughes, then forged the portrait to prove it. Exposed through the painter Edward Merton, Cyril shot himself. Erskine calls the theory unsound, but the narrator vows to prove it.
The narrator spends two weeks with the Sonnets and finds Willie Hughes everywhere: in the word 'shadow', in the 'marriage with his Muse', in Romeo and Juliet as the promised 'eternal lines'. He makes Marlowe the rival poet and Hughes the shepherd of A Lover's Complaint, praises the actor as the drama's medium, and places the friendship in the Renaissance revival of Plato's Symposium.
A musician named William Hewes at the Earl of Essex's deathbed raises the narrator's hopes but proves nothing. He begins a history of the Elizabethan boy actors, defends them against Puritans and modern critics, and tells how boys were trained, apprenticed and sometimes kidnapped for the stage. He imagines Hughes's early life and reads Shakespeare's quarrel with time as fear for a boy player's youth.
The narrator moves the sonnets about the dark woman to an earlier place and reads them as the story of an older, married woman who falls for Willie Hughes, and of Shakespeare's feigned passion for her turning real. He finds echoes in Manningham's diary and Cranley's 'Amanda', lays out the Sonnets as a drama in four acts, and imagines Hughes's death among English players in Germany.
The narrator comes to feel that the Sonnets tell the story of his own soul, then loses all belief the moment he posts his letter to Erskine. Erskine, now converted, will not be moved, and goes to Germany. Two years later his letter from Cannes announces a suicide for Willie Hughes, but the doctor reveals that he died of consumption. Lady Erskine gives the narrator the portrait.