the widow of Sir John Hopkins, for her confinement. In March 1601 she gave birth to a baby boy who died immediately (perhaps from syphilis, which it is believed Pembroke may have suffered from). Both Mary and Pembroke were dismissed from court. Life after court Mary did not seem as abashed by the business as her father, who considered it to be social ruin. Knollys tried to woo her once again, but Mary was firm. She had an affair with the married Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Leveson, bearing him two daughters. He left her £100 after his death in 1605 (his wife, who was suffering from a serious mental illness, had to be committed to the care of her father). After this she had an affair with Captain William Polwhele, one of Leveson's officers. She bore a son that was presumably his. Her mother was scandalized, writing to her other, married, daughter, "such shame as never had a Cheshire woman, worse now than ever. Write no more to me of her." Even Mary's marriage to Polwhele did not mollify her mother; she referred to Polwhele as "a very knave". When her husband died in 1610, Mary had a son and daughter to take care of. She married again, to a Pembrokeshire captain named John Lougher. Lougher was a "gentleman lawyer" and former M.P., who once served on the court of high commission at York. He died in 1636. She died in 1647 and was buried in Gawsworth, leaving a little Welsh property to her daughter who had married and had children herself. Her ghost is reputed to haunt Gawsworth Old Hall. Shakespeare Her relationship with Herbert is the basis for the claim that Fitton was the "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets. Herbert is one of the main candidates for the identity of the Fair Youth, a character who betrays the poet by having an affair with the Dark Lady, hence the claim that Fitton might be the lady. The suggestion was first made by Thomas Tyler in his 1890 edition of the sonnets. It was taken up by Frank Harris in several books, including The Women of Shakespeare and Shakespeare and his Love. His influential biography The Man Shakespeare asserted that Fitton had ruined Shakespeare's life and that he died "broken hearted for love of the Dark Lady". Recent scholars have not pursued these assertions. Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells comment