Dark Lady

Two LOVES I HAVE--Clara Longworth de Chambrun--Lippincott ($2.50).

The plain man-in-the-street sometimes feels that William Shakespeare never existed at all as a real person, or that perhaps he actually was Francis Bacon or an incarnation of Ignatius Donnelly in disguise. Most experts agree, however, that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon was the Shakespeare of the Plays and Sonnets which are still the highest peak in the jagged outline of English literature. But there remain many mysterious gaps in Shakespeare's personal history. Who, for instance, was the famed Dark Lady of the Sonnets Bernard Shaw and the late Frank Harris "proved" she was Mary Fitton, maid-of-honor at Elizabeth's court. Countess de Chambrun (Cincinnati-born sister of the late Nicholas Longworth) thinks the Dark Lady was Mistress Nan Davenant, wife of an Oxford innkeeper.

Countess de Chambrun bases her romanticized tale of Shakespeare's career on "two score years of personal research," which includes a knowledge of the latest diggings among Shakespeare's bones. Perhaps Anne Hathaway really was the beautiful and understanding wife Author de Chambrun portrays: perhaps Shakespeare really was mixed up in Papist alarums and Essex' plot; perhaps he went to Scotland and had a fine clack with King James. But Author de Chambrun, though she is a bright lady and writes a conscientious romance, has not the vivifying touch. Readers will get more of an inkling about Shakespeare the man in reading three of his sonnets than by attending 30 such fancy-dress parties as Two Loves I Have.

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