The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets is by Bernard Shaw. The preface explains why the writer identified the Dark Lady with Mistress Mary Fitton in a little piece written for a performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespear. The contents list headings such as How the Play came to be Written, Thomas Tyler, Frank Harris, Shakespear's Pessimism, Gaiety of Genius and Jupiter and Semele.

The text describes Thomas Tyler as a specialist in pessimism who had made a translation of Ecclesiastes of which eight copies a year were sold. The text says the language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, while the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion. A speaker says these were written to save friends from penury, calling the one As You Like It, meaning that it is not as I like it, and the other Much Ado About Nothing.