Influence
It is not known whether or not Wilde himself subscribed to the theory presented in the story. His lover Lord Alfred Douglas states that he did believe it. Samuel Butler accepted some aspects of it, regarding the name 'Will Hughes' as a "plausible conjecture".
Wilde's story may have been an influence on John Masefield, whose book Shakespeare and Spiritual Life (1924) suggests that the Fair Youth was an actor who was delicate and small enough to play parts such as the boy-servant Moth in Love's Labours Lost and the sprite Ariel in The Tempest. He believed that he may even have been a kind of symbol to Shakespeare for his own creative genius.
In James Joyce's novel Ulysses a character called Mr. Best says that Wilde's theory is "the most brilliant" of all identifications. André Gide also expressed approval, stating that the theory was "the only, not merely plausible, but possible, interpretation".
In G.S. Viereck's novel My First Two Thousand Years, the protagonist, the Wandering Jew, watches a performance given by Willie Hughes, who is "positively enchanting as Juliet". He learns that Shakespeare had dedicated his sonnets to the boy-actor, but when he meets him he discovers that the boy is actually a girl in disguise. Shakespeare knew this, and the girl blushingly admits that this is why he called her "the master-mistress of my passion".
Read more about this topic: The Portrait Of Mr. W. H.
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“To-day ... when material prosperity and well earned ease and luxury are assured facts from a national standpoint, woman’s work and woman’s influence are needed as never before; needed to bring a heart power into this money getting, dollar-worshipping civilization; needed to bring a moral force into the utilitarian motives and interests of the time; needed to stand for God and Home and Native Land versus gain and greed and grasping selfishness.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“I wish to reiterate all the reasons which [my predecessor] has presented in favor of the policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace with other nations and the best means of securing respect for the assertion of our rights of the defense of our interests, and the exercise of our influence in international matters.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)