The Portrait of Mr. W. H. / Sonnet 20

The Portrait of Mr. W. H. is a story written by Oscar Wilde, first published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1889. It was later added to the collection Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, though it does not appear in early editions.^[1] An enlarged edition planned by Wilde, almost twice as long as the Blackwoods version, with cover illustration by Charles Ricketts, did not proceed and only came to light after Wilde's death. This was published in limited edition by Mitchell Kennerley in New York in 1921, and in a first regular English edition by Methuen in 1958, edited by Vyvyan Holland. ^[2]

The story is about an attempt to uncover the identity of Mr W.H., the enigmatic dedicatee ofShakespeare's Sonnets. It is based on a theory, originated by Thomas Tyrwhitt, that the Sonnets were addressed to one Willie Hughes, portrayed in the story as a boy actor who specialized in playing women in Shakespeare's company. This theory depends on the assumption that the dedicatee is also the Fair Youth who is the subject of most of the poems. The only evidence for this theory is a number of sonnets (such as Sonnet 20) that make puns on the words 'Will' and 'Hues.'^[3]

Sonnet 20

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,

Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,

Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created;

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,

Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

–William Shakespeare

External links[edit]

The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889)
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1921) courtesy of Archive.Org
An informative Digital Humanities Project on The Annotated Portrait of Mr. W. H.
An article from The Guardian about the work. Fact and Fictions

Oscar Wilde

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
--from "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889)