FITTON, MARY (c. 1578-1647)

This article appears in Volume V10, Page 440 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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FITTON, MARY (c. 1578-1647) , identified by some writers with the " dark lady " of Shakespeare's sonnets, was the daughter of Sir Edward Fitton of Gawsworth, Cheshire, and was baptized on the 24th of June 1578. Her elder sister, Anne, married John Newdigate in 1587, in her fourteenth year. About 1595 Mary Fitton became maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. Her father recommended her to the care of Sir William Knollys, comptroller of the queen's household, who promised to defend the " innocent lamb " from the " wolfish cruelty and fox-like subtlety of the tame beasts of this place." Sir William was fifty and already married, but he soon became suitor to Mary Fitton, in hope of the speedy death of the actual Lady Knollys, and appears to have received considerable encouragement. There is no hint in her authenticated biography that she was acquainted with Shakespeare. William Kemp, who was a clown in Shakespeare's company, dedicated his Nine Daies Wonder to Mistress Anne (perhaps an error for Mary) Fitton, " Maid of Honour to Elizabeth"; and there is a sonnet addressed to her in an anonymous volume, A Woman's Woorth defended against all the Men in the World (1599). In 1600 Mary Fitton led a dance in court festivities at which William

Herbert

, later

earl

EARL

of Pembroke, is known to have been present; and shortly afterwards she became his mistress. In February 16os Pembroke was sent to the

Fleet

FLEET

in connexion with this affair, but Mary Fitton, whose child died soon after its

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

, appears to have simply been dismissed from court. Mary Fitton seems to have gone to her sister, Lady
Newdigate, at Arbury. A second scandal has been fixed on Mary Fitton by George Ormerod, author of History of Cheshire, in a MS. quoted by Mr. T. Tyler (

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

, 27th Sept. 1884). Ormerod asserted, on the strength of the MSS. of Sir Peter Leycester, that she had two illegitimate daughters by Sir Richard Leveson, the friend and correspondent of her sister Anne. He also gives the name of her first husband as Captain Logher, and her second as Captain Polwhele, by whom she had a son and daughter. Polwhele died in 1609 or 161o, about three years after his

marriage

MARRIAGE

. But Ormerod was mistaken in the order of Mary Fitton's husbands, for her second husband, Logher, died in 1636. Her own will, which was proved in 1647, gives her name as " Mary Lougher." In Gawsworth church there is a painted monument of the Fittons, in which Anne and Mary are represented kneeling behind their mother. It is stated that from what remains of the colouring Mary was a dark woman, which is of course essential to her identification with the lady of the sonnets, but in the portraits at Arbury described by Lady Newdigate-Newdegate in her Gossip from a Mvniment Room (1897) she has brown

hair

HAIR (a word common to Teutonic languages)

and grey eyes.
The identity of the Arbury portrait with Mary Fitton was challenged by Mr Tyler and by Dr Furnivall. For an answer to their remarks see an appendix by C. G. O. Bridgeman in the and edition of Lady Newdigate-Newdegate's book.
The suggestion that Mary Fitton should be regarded as the false mistress of Shakespeare's sonnets rests on a very thin chain of reasoning, and by no means follows on the acceptance of the theory that William

Herbert

was the addressee of the sonnets, though it of course fails with the rejection of that supposition. Mr William Archer (Fortnightly Review, December 1897) found some support for Mary Fitton's identification with the " dark lady " in the fact that Sir William Knollys was also her suitor, thus numbering three " Wills " among her admirers. This supplies a definite interpretation, whether right or wrong, to the initial lines of Sonnet 135:
" Whoever bath her wish, thou hast thy ' Will,'
And ' Will ' to boot, and ' Will ' in overplus." Arguments in favour of her adoption into the Shakespeare circle will be found in Mr Thomas Tyler's Shakespeare's Sonnets (189o, pp. 73-92), and in the same writer's Herbert-Fitton Theory of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1898).

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