(Images by DWB)
If forced or requested to select my favorite character in all of Shakespeare other than wild and wily Shakespeare himself, it would probably have to be the Dark Lady (or at least today it would definitely be the Dark Lady).
She is Good Will’s Mary Magdalene.
Anyone who’s ever loved a brilliant, promiscuous, raven-haired Spanish woman with darkly olive-colored skin and a shady reputation (to say the very least) will understand the attraction.
Her musical and poetic and intellectual abilities, her independent spirit and the fact that she inspired all this (all these deathless sonnets by the Western world’s greatest writer other than those who wrote the Bible) are her greatest calling cards.
“I do believe her, though I know she lies,” is one of my all-time favorite lines of poetry.
There have been myriads of scattered interpretations about the shades of meaning contained in this line.
And I know just what it means.
It’s about, among other things, Shakespeare’s voyeuristic obsessions and jealousies; and mine.
Dale Barrigar Williams
Saragun Springs 