The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

But, who was this mysterious dark lady? This temptress who has captured the heart of William Shakespeare.

Well over the years many contenders have been put forward. Some maintain that she was a notorious black London prostitute working in a brothel in Clerkenwell known as Lucy Parker Lucy Walker or Black Luce. And yet it doesn't have the ring of truth. Shakespeare is giving us a description of the social standing of his mistress. This is a lady who can play the virginals, this is a lady who is educated, this is a lady who moves in high circles. And let's not forget itis an affair with a married woman this is not a dalliance a one night stand with a prostitute, this is something that is causing guilt to rage within him.

Perhaps for our solution we should look around his London - some maintain that it could have been the wife of his printer, others suggest that it could have been a celebrated beauty of the court of Queen Elizabeth the first - Mary Fitton or Mal Fitton as she was also known. Certainly she does fit the description of being of high social standing. And yet what we know of her suggests that she was a social climber hardly likely to have surrendered the glories of her body to a fledgling dramatist.

Let us therefore move to an intriguing document, the notebook of Simon Foreman, the Elizabethan astrologer who provides us with a fascinating and highly likely contender.

In 1592 Simon Foreman had caught Bubonic plague. Deciding he had nothing to lose, he opted for self treatment. Amazingly it worked and he went on to make a full recovery. He then set himself up as an astrologer for society a sort of counsellor for the Elizabethan age. He tells us from his notebooks that in 1597 he was approached separately and unknown to each other by a husband and wife. The husband he tells us was Alphonse Lanier, a royal musician and the woman his wife.

Foreman, despite the fact that she was his patient, became involved in a relationship with this woman. He writes of her infidelity telling us that in September 1597 with her husband away, she invited him to her house where he supped with her and 'stayed the entire night'. He goes further to reveal that she was ... "married, evidently adulterous, high handed to the point of tyranny" ... and as a wife of a musician to the court she may well have possessed the Virginals upon which Shakespeare tells us he had watched her play.

Unfortunately the one piece of information he does not give us is any physical description of Amelia Lanier but since her father was of Italian Jewish descent, there is a reasonable likelihood that she was black haired and of dark complexion. If we cannot say definitely that she was Shakespeare's dark lady, and therefore his mistress, we can at least say she is one of the likeliest of all the contenders.

Whoever inspired these great works to flow from the pen of the world's best loved dramatist what is probable is that from the mixed emotions that raged within the young Shakespeare, the great passion, the boundless joy, the desperate sadness, came the inspiration for possibly the greatest tragic love story ever told, Romeo and Juliet.