The Portrait
The image of the person on the portrait is given in details, and most of the attention is given to the fact that this young man looked more like a woman: “He seemed about seventeen years of age, and was of quite extraordinary personal beauty, though evidently somewhat effeminate – one would have said that the face with its dreamy wistful eyes, and its delicate scarlet lips, was the face of a girl”. The image of a girly-looking boy is not accidental – at the times of Shakespeare women were not allowed to perform in plays, and the roles of women were given to young boys who resembled a woman; that’s why Willie Hughes (whose portrait it might have been) looked more like a girl than a boy.
Nature
Images of nature are very often used in literature as a background of the events described. In the evening when the narrator learned all the truth about the portrait and the events concerning its appearance, he pictures nature around him: “As I walked home through St. James’s Park the dawn was just breaking over London. The white swans were lying asleep on the polished lake, and the gaunt Palace looked purple against the pale-green sky”. Tranquility of the world around is opposed to his inner world as he said “I thought of Cyril Graham, and my eyes filled with tears”. The contrast of the narrator’s inner world and the world around him is given with the purpose to emphasize that “judging by cover” is not an effective way to analyze.
Obsession
Just for a short time but the narrator got obsessed with the idea about Willie Hughes as well. “For two weeks I worked hard at the Sonnets, hardly ever going out, and refusing all invitations” – as he said, “every day I seemed to be discovering something new, and Willie Hughes became to me a kind of spiritual presence, an ever-dominant personality”. Such a fanatic devotion made the narrator even have some visions: “I could almost fancy that I saw him standing in the shadow of my room, so well had Shakespeare drawn him, with his golden hair, his tender flower-like grace, his dreamy deep-sunken eyes, his delicate mobile limbs, and his white lily hands”. The image of the devotion borders with madness, and fortunately the narrator managed to get out of it just in time not to die because of the fanatic idea.
