‘Th’expense of spirit…Q129

Every actor knows this line. Alongside sonnets 18, ‘Shall I…’ and 116, ‘Let me not…’ and thanks to Sting, 130, ‘My mistress’ eyes…’

Lust is its subject and that’s why every actor knows it. Is chastity a virtue for actors? is it known? The casting couch exists all the way down to Community theatre and all the way back up to actors hiding their sexual identity in Hollywood. Speculation and rumour and of course those sleeping with the particular individual can give us the spectrum involved from truth to lies. If only we can bribe them into speaking. Naturally this phenomenon is not new in the Theatre world.

Q138:1-4.
‘When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.’

There is an anecdote written by John Manningham, a Law student in Middle Temple in 1602, about R. Burbage and W. Sh. vying for the attention of a lusty citizen (who apparently didn’t care who she slept with). Sh. actually snuck in there before Richard B., which just goes to show that 2 married Elizabethan men of the Theatre were perhaps as unfaithful as their mistresses.

as Q129 finishes:
‘All this the world well knows, yet none knows well,
To shun the heaven, that leads men to this hell.’