Page:The portrait of Mr. W. H (IA portraitofmrwh01wild).pdf/33

 nets is not the art of the Sonnets themselves, which indeed were to him but slight and secret things—it is the art of the dramatist to which he is always alluding; and he to whom Shakespeare said—

"Thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance,'—"

he to whom he promised immortality, "Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men,'—"

he who was to him the tenth 'muse' and

"Ten times more in worth Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,'"

was surely none other than the boy-actor for whom he created Viola and Imogen, Juliet and Rosalind, Portia and Desdemona, and Cleopatra herself."

"The boy actor of Shakespeare's plays?" I cried.

"Yes," said Erskine. "This was Cyril Graham's theory, evolved as you see purely from the Sonnets themselves, and depending for its acceptance not so much on demonstrable proof or formal evidence, but on a kind of spiritual and artistic sense, by which alone he claimed could the true meaning of