Page:The portrait of Mr. W. H (IA portraitofmrwh01wild).pdf/86

 years of age. It was impossible that his musician could have been the Mr W.H. of the Sonnets. Perhaps Shakespeare's young friend was the son of the player upon the virginals? It was at least something to have discovered that Will Hews was an Elizabethan name. Indeed the name Hews seemed to have been closely connected with music and the stage. The first English actress was the lovely Margaret Hews, whom Prince Rupert so madly adored. What more probable than that between her and Lord Essex’ musician had come the boy-actor of Shakespeare’s plays? In 1584 a certain Thomas Hews brought out at Gray's Inn a Euripidean tragedy entitled “The Misfortunes of Arthur,” receiving much assistance in the arrangement of the dumb shows from one Francis Bacon, then a student of law. Surely he was some near kinsman of the lad to whom Shakespeare said—

“Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all”; the “profitless usurer” of “unused beauty,” as he describes him. But the proofs, the links—where were they? Alas! I could not find them. It seemed to me that I was always on the brink of absolute verifi