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Eliza Dumais
May 10th, 2013
T.A. King
ENG 133a – Advanced Shakespeare
Final Paper

The Fair Youth and Desdemona – The Dark Lady and Cleopatra:
A Comparison of Shakespearean Romantic Characters and How Gender’s
Perception in Jacobean Society Effect Our View of Shakespeare Today

When it comes to Shakespeare, we have very little to collect about his personal

life. There are documents of baptism, weddings, land holdings, and then there are seven

scrawled signatures, all of which are spelled differently. And that would be, essentially,

the extent of what we know about Shakespeare. The rest is conjecture. The most we have

to piece Shakespeare’s life together are his plays and sonnets. Through his works, we are

able to glimpse into the life of the famed poet.

Like most artists do, it’s most likely that Shakespeare used the inspiration from

his life to bring a sense of reality to his characters. But what if, perhaps, Shakespeare

used his personal relationships as inspiration for one piece of work and then used them as

further inspiration for other works? It would make sense to recycle characters that had

previously been fully flushed out and give them new life upon the stage. Seeing the

object of one’s desire on public stage could be entirely erotic, and having that character

be a woman that’s based upon a man and played by a young boy completely complicates

the situation.

Consider for the moment that Shakespeare gave two of his famous, tragic

heroines the personalities and physical traits of people that existed in his own life. These

characters would evoke a special emotion from the playwright, especially if these people
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impacted Shakespeare’s life in a considerable way (either positively or negatively).

Would Shakespeare send these people to their deaths upon a stage for an audience to

watch and enjoy? We have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not he would, but it

is difficult to ignore the staggering similarities between some of his characters. The

characters in question are Desdemona, from Othello, and Cleopatra, from Antony and

Cleopatra. One could posit that Desdemona and Cleopatra share personality and physical

traits with the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s Sonnet cycle, respectively.

Though Desdemona and Cleopatra are already established characters though previously

existing texts, Shakespeare was given the freedom to embellish the ladies how he saw fit.

Of course, there were a few social constructions that effected how the two female

characters were depicted on a Jacobean stage. The infrastructure of gender if the time

period restricted how the women could be played and therefore have created characters

that are very much worth studying through a modern lens.

The Inspirations:

In order to discern who the characters become, it is important to examine what

has been asserted as Shakespeare’s inspiration for the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady of

the sonnet sequence. It must also be presumed that Shakespeare wrote the 154 sonnets

from his perspective, using his voice therefore deeming the speaker and Shakespeare as

the same entity. The majority of the sonnets seem to have been written between the years

1592 and 1594, though there are few sonnets that suggest the writing went as far as the

year 1600 (Ciccarelli). While there is absolutely no certain way to be sure of any actual

persons, it is speculated that the Fair Youth sonnets were commissioned for Henry
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Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton. Wriothesley, nine years Shakespeare’s junior,

was a patron of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. The two men

became good friends, made obvious by The Rape of Lucrece’s dedication where

Shakespeare expresses a deep, personal thanks and “radiates an air of intimacy”

(Ciccarelli). The sonnets began as a neutral third party that urged marriage on the Youth,

if only for the purpose of producing an heir. By Sonnet 10, the speaker introduces himself

and begins to show a personal investment in the love life of the youth (“Oh, change thy

thought, that I may change my mind” Sonnet 10, line 9).

Given the available portraits of Wriothesley, he was indeed a beautiful young man

and certain to catch the eye of any person, and his small fortune did not hurt his

popularity, either. While the is no official claim whether the dedication in the 1609

Quarto of Sonnets to a “Mr. W.H.” is in fact Henry Wriothesley, some Shakespearean

scholars believe that the inverted initials were to mask the identity of the dedicated party.

Given the sonnets’ amorous and intimate nature, it is not hard to believe that discretion

was desired.1

There are many theories about whom the Dark Lady could be, but the most

supported answer is that she was Emilia Bassany Lanier. In his essay “Emilia Lanier IS

the Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” independent scholar Martin Green asserts, and gives

ample evidence, that the eventual ‘proto-feminist’ is the woman that caused great “poems

of such intensity and beauty” (Green, 544).

Emilia Bassany came from a family of Venetian musicians that played music in

1
Stated in Lecture with Professor Ramie Targoff, Brandeis University, Fall 2011
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Queen Elizabeth’s court. Coming from a family of music, Emilia would be well-versed in

musical instruments. Perhaps she played the virginals as Shakespeare’s Dark Lady did

and was so admired in Sonnet 128. In order to establish her place in English society,

Emilia focused all of her efforts into becoming a Lady. With this goal in mind, Emilia

used the tools she had to obtain her status. She then proceeded to attempt affairs as to

gain favor with people of Elizabeth’s court. Green maintains that Shakespeare and the

Bassany family knew each other through Henry Carey, First Baron of Hunsdon, who was

Lord Chamberlin from 1585 to 1596. It is common knowledge that Emilia Lanier and the

Lord Chamberlin had an affair while she was married to Alphonso Lanier. Around the

month of June 1594, Lord Hunsdon “had assumed the patronage of the acting company

of which Shakespeare was a member” (Green, 563). It can be posited that the Baron of

Hunsdon was the liaison between the court musicians and the acting company – a liaison

that would most definitely have introduced Lanier to Shakespeare at the time he was

composing his sonnets for Wriothesley.

As also noted in English documents, the Bassany family was Italian and Jewish –

giving way to Emilia’s dark hair, eyes, and complexion. Moreover, the Bassany family

crest contained a mulberry tree “the Italian name for which is mora, a word also meaning

black” (Green, 563). With this knowledge, one may look to The Merchant of Venice and

find the character Bassanio, a common alternate spelling of Bassany – an

acknowledgement that Shakespeare knew the name, its origin, and also had a certain kind

of relationship towards peoples of the Jewish faith.

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Bassany also sounds like the French word for tawny, dark, or swarthy, which

would be the word basanée. The knowledge of the family name’s entomology in various

romance languages meant that people would refer to them as ‘black’ or ‘dark’ regardless

of “his or her actual coloration” (Green 563). The people of England were also going

through a time where they were reevaluating their beauty ideals, now seeing that applying

cosmetics to appear ‘more fair’ doesn’t actually mean that they are fair. This reformation

began to acknowledge more natural beauties that did not necessarily wear cosmetics to

enhance their looks, such as Emilia Lanier (“But now black is beauty’s successive heir”

Sonnet 127, line 3).

With these facts in mind, one may see the strong connection between Emilia

Bassany Lanier and Shakespeare’s Dark Lady. Both women were not afraid to use their

bodies and sexual prowess to obtain what they need – whether it was power, protection,

or pleasure.

The Fair Youth as Desdemona:

Without reading into the Sonnets’ meanings, one may assert that Wriosthesley

and Desdemona are both young people with a fair complexion and a certain kind of

purity about them (whether it is their naïveté or their innate youngness). The difference

between the two, disregarding their genders, is that the Youth refuses to settle down and

start a family whereas Desdemona is too eager to settle down and elopes with the Moor

without her father’s consent. Desdemona is what Shakespeare wanted the Fair Youth to

be towards him – loving, eager, and faithful. Written in approximately 1603, Othello was
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Shakespeare’s response to Wriosthesley’s rejection and refusal to reciprocate

Shakespeare’s love and, going further, betraying him by partaking in carnal relations with

the Dark Lady. In Othello, Shakespeare can have his ideal love yet can still punish that

love for committing grievous offenses against him.

As some of the sonnets assert, Shakespeare urges the Fair Youth to marry so that

he may produce a legitimate heir to his title and fortune, but to also pass along his

beautiful genetics for another generation to enjoy. In Sonnet 10 (where the speaker

becomes a participant and character in the subject’s life), Shakespeare encourages the

Fair Youth to produce and heir:

For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any,

Who for thyself art so unprovident.
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov’d of many,
But that thou none lov’st is most evident;
For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate
That ‘gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
Oh, change thy thought, that I may change my mind.
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove.
Make thee another self for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee. (Sonnet 10)

Shakespeare is upset with the fair youth because he has no love for himself or his estate

to even care to attempt to produce an heir. The Youth has love for no one and therefore

has no care for whom he might be disappointing with his actions. He fails his duty as a

son (and heir to his father) by wasting his time and semen on fruitless pursuits.

Shakespeare wishes that the Fair Youth would make an heir so that he (Shakespeare)
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might be able to look upon him and see the Fair Youth’s beauty in the next generation of

courtiers.

In regards to Desdemona, Shakespeare makes her a character that cannot help but

love and disregards her daughter’s duty to be with the man she loves. Desdemona is also

not punished for following her heart because the man to whom she is sworn is a goodly

man and a good choice for a husband (“If virtue no delighted beauty lack / [Othello,

Desdemona’s husband] is far more fair than black” I, iii, 330-331).

I do perceive here a divided duty.

To you I am bound for life and education.
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you. You are the lord of duty.
I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband,
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord. (I, iii, 209-218)

Although it’s obviously different for a man to subvert his father’s wishes than it is for a

woman to subvert hers, the sentiments are essentially the same. Desdemona disobeys her

father but knows that she will find happiness in serving Othello and producing him an

heir – though that’s not the sole reason why he takes Desdemona as his wife. Typical in

dramatic romance stories, Desdemona makes a grand gesture of love towards her beloved

which is exactly what the Fair Youth will not do – towards Shakespeare or otherwise.

Another area where the Fair Youth transgresses Shakespeare’s love where the

young man conducts a sexual relationship with a mistress of Shakespeare’s (presumably

the Dark Lady). This serious offense wounds Shakespeare deeply and leaves him feeling

bereft and forsaken by love, his partners, and life.

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That thou hast her it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her because thou knowst I love her;
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross. (Sonnet 42, lines 1-10)

Shakespeare is very upset at the fact that his beloved Youth has gone out and taken

Shakespeare’s mistress for his own. It isn’t even so much that he took his mistress, but

that the Youth is now not only Shakespeare’s to love. Although he may urge the Youth

not to hoard his beauty (and his seed) in earlier sonnets, Shakespeare had no intention of

losing the Youth’s love and affection. Shakespeare’s pain is increased as he realizes that

there is nothing that he can do to punish the Youth that would not end up punishing

himself in the process. All Shakespeare can do is look on and hope that his mistress loses

the Fair Youth just like he did and that the Fair Youth will return to Shakespeare to love

him, or to love no one, as he did in the past.

With the death of Desdemona, Shakespeare is able to penalize the Fair Youth but

still leave his ideal purity intact by leaving Desdemona a pure character. When

Desdemona asks her enraged husband: “Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?,” (IV,

ii, 81) Othello responds with: Heaven stops the nose at it and the moon winks/

The bawdy wind that kisses all it meets/ Is hush'd within the hollow mine of earth, / And

will not hear it. What committed! / Impudent strumpet! (IV, ii, 88-92). Desdemona denies
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the accusation, as it is an entirely false claim, and tells her husband that she is a “vessel

for [her] lord/ From any other foul unlawful touch” (IV, ii, 96-97).

Even if Desdemona were guilty (which she clearly is not), the fact that she even

denied the claim to spare her husband’s feelings is more than the Fair Youth ever did for

Shakespeare. There does not seem to be much, or any, remorse from the Fair Youth or

the mistress whom he took to bed. Desdemona’s overwhelming love for her husband is a

perfect foil to the Fair Youth’s rather blatant disregard of Shakespeare’s emotions. While

Shakespeare could not get his love reciprocated in real life, he made a character that

satisfied his needs yet still took the blame of being untrue.

The Dark Lady as Cleopatra:

There is quite a bit of evidence as to why Emilia Lanier is the Dark Lady of the

Sonnets, but one would be amiss to exclude the similarities between these two women

and Cleopatra of Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra has been known – for about two

millennia – as a sexual, confident, powerful and passionate woman that ruled over Egypt

and had two wild love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Fortunately, we do

know a lot about Cleopatra’s life or about as much as one can know about an ancient

figure of history. Cleopatra’s entire life was dedicated to remaining in power over her

country and over her men. She has been viewed (by men, mostly) as a woman who only

used her body to get what she felt she needed out of life. This rather misogynistic

approach to Cleopatra’s style fails to recognize that Cleopatra was simply using the tools

available to her to secure her place in Egypt and in Ancient Greece.

There is then, of course, the issue of her race. A descendant from a Macedonian
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family, Cleopatra would appear to have a skin pigment closer that of the peoples of

Greece rather than that of her subjects. Still, Cleopatra was still regarded as a racial other

but still a beautiful woman and someone with whom that should not be trifled. This is the

same sort of situation with Emilia Lanier. ‘Fair’ and ‘black’ referred mostly to one’s

dispositions along with their coloring and showing the disparity between the two (again,

referencing Othello’s “virtue” and “beauty” from I, iii).

In Sonnet 128, Shakespeare admires the Dark Lady for her talent on the virginals.

This sonnet is surrounded by two others that most definitely do not praise the Dark Lady,

but rather using words like “shame,” “disgrace,” “slandering,” “murderous,” “savage,”

and “hell” (Sonnet 127, 129). But Sonnet 128 strikes a different tune and focuses heavily

on the daintiness of her extremities:

With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy' those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. (Sonnet 128, lines 2-14)

For being a “woman color’d ill,” this woman certainly does evoke a sense of nimbleness

and elegance (Sonnet 144, line 4).

Cleopatra and her audiences also take special notice of her hands. Their take on

her overall appearance, though, is different. She claims that her “hands do lack nobility,
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that they strike / A meaner than myself” and that she is “black” with “Phoebus’ amorous

pinches” (II, v, 102-103; I, v, 33). However, onlookers agree that she has “the white hand

of a lady” and should be respected as such. Even though Shakespeare’s ladies have a

‘blackness’ about them, they are able to be seen as proper women in society because they

demand a certain courtesy due to their manners and demeanor.

Cleopatra and the Dark Lady also have one very important trait in common: they

are able to disarm their men with their sexuality and prowess. Shakespeare is an

independent man that, for all intents and purposes, disregards his marriage vow and stays

in East London to be where the people are and where the events are happening. His Dark

Lady, however, takes away his agency and makes it so he is helpless in her wake.

Shakespeare claims, “Myself I’ll forfeit” – he has resigned himself over to being at the

will of his Lady (Sonnet 134, line 3). He is unsure of any of his senses when it comes to

the Dark Lady. The “love put in [his] head, / . . . [has] no correspondence with true sight”

and it almost appears that Shakespeare is under some sort of spell that gives him “false

eyes” and makes him question where his “judgment fled” (Sonnet 148, lines 1-2, 5, 3).

Cleopatra has quite the same effect on her Antony. The once feared and highly

respected war veteran is easily reduced to wearing Cleopatra’s “tires and mantles” as they

drunkenly lounge in bed in the early morning (II, v, 26). Antony also has a difficult time

coming to terms with the fact that Cleopatra has a hold of his honor. He does know that

“if [he] lose[s] [his] honor” then he is sure to lose himself (III, iv, 24-25). Still, there is an

important distinction between Cleopatra’s and the Dark Lady’s manipulations. The Dark

Lady is aware of her active ‘unmanning’ of Shakespeare while Cleopatra is not aware
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that she is actively weakening Anthony. The love that Antony and Cleopatra share gives

them both a sense of ‘false eyes’ and they are not aware that they are hurting one another.

The Dark Lady, on the other hand, may not mean to bear any maliciousness, but she does

use Shakespeare as a means of moving up in status (bedding a famous poet and

potentially becoming his muse may bring certain perks to a self-serving lady).

Wrapping up and Looking Forward:

Shakespeare found art and poetry in everyday occurrences, just like many artists

do. In writing Othello and Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare was given pre-established

characters that gave him the ability to embellish their personalities. Shakespeare used

people from his own life as inspiration for his Sonnets and then re-used them to create

full-bodied characters in his plays. The Fair Youth and the Dark Lady were a source of

great joy and great pain for the middle-aged playwright and it makes sense that his

personal affairs came through on the page and came alive on stage.

But what of the actors? In Shakespeare’s time, women were not permitted to

perform on a stage in a common place such as the Globe Theater. One may consider the

implications of seeing a sexual and powerful woman played by a ‘pip-squeak boy’. And

further, what does it mean to have Desdemona based upon a young man, but played by a

young boy pretending to be a woman? In her essay Androgyny, Mimesis, and the

Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the English Renaissance Stage, Phyllis Rackin poses an

important point to remember: “On a stage where female characters were always played

by male actors, feminine gender was inevitably a matter of costume; and in plays where

the heroines dressed as boys, gender became doubly problematic, the unstable product of
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role-playing and costume, not only in the theatrical representation but also within the

fiction presented on stage” (Rackin 29). Still, the perception and response to gender and

femininity was a thing to be looked down upon by men – entirely disregarding, of course,

homosexuality or any other alternative sexualities or preferences.

The matter of race also comes into play as well, posing important questions on

how the applications of race in a Renaissance theater setting helped established

stereotypes that have lasted into the 21st Century. These are, of course, questions that can

only be met with more questions and be examined by enveloping ones’ self in the history

and texts of the time period.

 Works Cited

Ciccarelli, Jon. "Fair Youth Sonnets." Hudson Shakespeare Company. N.p., n.d. Web.

Apr.-May 2013.

Green, Martin. "Emilia Lanier IS the Dark Lady of the Sonnets." Routledge English

Studies87.5 (October 2006): 544-76. Academic Search Premier. Web. Apr.-May

2013.<http://web.ebscohost.com.resources.library.brandeis.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/p

dfviewer?sid=0b0b7c0b-c34e-4390-b92b-c638df5e01cc%40sessionmgr115&vid=

1&hid=103>.

Rackin, Phyllis. "Androgyny, Mimesis and the Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the

English Renaissance Stage." PLMA 102.1 (January 1987): 29-41. JSTOR. Web.

Apr.-May 2013. <https://moodle.brandeis.edu/file.php/15350/Rackin_-

_Androgyny_Mimesis_and_marriage.pdf>.

Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks,

1999. Print.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. New York: Simon &

Schuster Paperbacks, 1993. Print.

Shakespeare, William, and Grazia Margreta. De. Shakespeare's Sonnets. New York:

Barnes & Noble Shakespeare, 2011. Print.