Page:The portrait of Mr. W. H (IA portraitofmrwh01wild).pdf/65

 the keystone of his dramatic power? How bitter now seemed the whole tragedy of his desertion and his shame!—shame that he made sweet and lovely by the mere magic of his personality, but that was none the less shame. Yet as Shakespeare forgave him, should not we forgive him also? I did not care to pry into the mystery of his sin or of the sin, if such it was, of the great poet who had so dearly loved him. “I am that I am,” said Shakespeare in a sonnet of noble scorn,—

“I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own; I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown.”

Willie Hughes’ abandonment of Shakespeare’s theatre was a different matter, and I investigated it at great length. Finally I came to the conclusion that Cyril Graham had been wrong in regarding the rival dramatist of Sonnet LXXX as Chapman. It was obviously Marlowe who was alluded to. At