to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an
inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady
having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun
from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the
suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put
himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so
successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and
thirtieth sonnet!

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head;
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak; yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was
never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was
not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as
ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her
complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy
being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes;