in the following stanza of the poem, where we are told of the youth who—
“did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted,”
that there were those who—
“..dialogued for him what he would say,
Asked their own wills, and made their Wills obey.”
Yes: the “rose-cheeked Adonis” of the Venus poem, the false shepherd of the “Lover's Complaint,” the “tender churl,” the “beauteous niggard” of the Sonnets, was none other but a young actor; and as I read through the various descriptions given of him, I saw that the love that Shakespeare bore him was as the love of a musician for some delicate instrument on which he delights to play, as a sculptor’s love for some rare and exquisite material that suggests a new form of plastic beauty, a new mode of plastic expression. For all Art has its medium, its material, be it that of rhythmical words, or of pleasurable colour, or of sweet and subtly-divided sound; and, as one of the most fascinating critics of our day has pointed out, it is to the qualities inherent in
