Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/166

 predominant place in his patron's esteem is threatened by the favour bestowed by the patron on rival poets. In 1594, when most of Shakespeare's sonnets were probably written, Southampton was the centre of attraction among poetic aspirants. No other patron's favour was at the moment more persistently sought by newcomers in the literary field. There is a possibility that Shakespeare saw his chief rival in Barnabe Barnes, a youthful protégé of the earl; Barnes, in one of his sonnets, had eulogised Southampton's virtues and inspiring eyes in language which phrases in Shakespeare's sonnets seem to reflect. In other sonnets in which Shakespeare avows love in the Elizabethan sense of friendship for a handsome youth of wealth and rank, there are many hints of Southampton's known character and career. The opening sequence of seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so that ‘his fair house’ may not fall into decay, can only have been addressed to a young peer like Southampton, who was as yet unmarried, had vast possessions, and was the sole male representative of his family.

Southampton doubtless inspired Shakespeare with genuine personal affection, but it was in perfect accord with the forms of address that were customary in the intercourse of poets with patrons for Shakespeare to describe his relations with his Mæcenas in the language of an overmastering passion. Some exaggeration was imperative among Elizabethan sonnetteers in depicting the personal attractions of a patron. But the extant portraits of Southampton confirm the ‘fair’ aspect with which the sonnet's hero is credited. Shakespeare's frequent references in his sonnets to his youthful patron's ‘painted counterfeit’ (sonnets 16, 24, 47, 67) were doubtless suggested by the frequency with which Southampton sat for his portrait (see list of portraits ad fin.). Sonnet 68 has an allusion to the youth's ‘golden tresses,’ and Southampton is known to have attracted special attention at court by his vanity in wearing his auburn hair so long as to fall below his shoulders. The lascivious temper with which Shakespeare credits his hero, and the patron's intrigue with the poet's mistress which the sonnets indicate, are in full agreement with what is known of Southampton's youthful amours. The extreme youth with which the hero of the sonnets is at times credited presents no difficulty. Southampton, who was twenty-one in 1594, was generally judged to be young for his years, while serious-minded Shakespeare at the age of thirty—on the threshold of middle age—naturally tended to exaggerate the difference between his boyish patron's age and his own (Elizabethan sonnetteers, moreover, habitually respected Petrarch's convention of speaking of themselves as far advanced in years). Sonnet 107, which seems to refer to the death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession of James I, may be regarded as a congratulatory greeting from Shakespeare on Southampton's release from prison, and is doubtless the last of the series. (Shakespeare's sonnets were not published till 1609, although they had been circulated earlier in manuscript. The printed volume was the surreptitious venture of a disreputable and half-educated publisher, Thomas Thorpe [q.v.], who knew nothing of the sonnets' true history, and dedicated the book to a friend in the trade, who was a partner in the transaction of the publication. Thorpe, in the Pistol-like language that he invariably affected in such dedicatory greetings as are extant from his eccentric pen, adapted to his humoursome purposes the common dedicatory formula (which ‘wisheth’ a patron ‘all happiness’ and ‘eternity’), and puzzled future students by bombastically dubbing the friend ‘Mr. W. H.,’ who procured for him the unauthorised ‘copy’ of the sonnets, ‘the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets;’ Thorpe employed ‘begetter’ in the sense of ‘procurer,’ in accordance with a not unfamiliar Elizabethan usage. The laws of Elizabethan bibliography render it irrational to seek in Thorpe's dedicatory bombast for a clue to the persons commemorated by Shakespeare in the text of his sonnets.)

At the time that Shakespeare was penning his eulogies in 1594 Southampton, although just of age, was still unmarried. When he was seventeen Burghley had suggested a union between him and his granddaughter Lady Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. The Countess of Southampton approved the match, but Southampton declined to entertain it. By some observers at court he was regarded as too fantastic and volatile to marry at all. In 1595 he involved himself in an intrigue with one of the queen's waiting women, Elizabeth, daughter of John Vernon of Hodnet in Shropshire, and a first cousin of the Earl of Essex. The amour was deemed injurious to his reputation. In 1596 he withdrew from court and played a part as a volunteer with his friend Essex in the military and naval expedition to Cadiz. Next year he again accompanied Essex on the expedition to the Azores. These experiences developed in him a martial ardour which improved his position, but on his return to court in January 1598 he gave new proof of his