of these insuing sonnets – Mr. W.H. - all happinesse and that eternitie, promised by our ever-living [=defunct] poet“? (It would appear that the printer Thomas Thorpe is quoting from a dedication to W.H. - id est Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton- that was already in existence.)
These sonnets give us definite proof, that Will Shaksper was not William Shakespeare. That a commoner should write such sonnets and dedicate them to the young Earl of Southampton, is historically impossible.
And hardly anybody thinks that “Mr. W.H.” could possibly be anyone other than Henry Wriothesley.
1. The description of the youth in the sonnets and the description of Adonis in Shakespeare’s epic poem, “Venus and Adonis“ (1593) are identical. The two young men are both described as being enigmatic, fascinating and self-enamoured; the epitome of androgynous beauty, a mixture of Narcissus, Hermaphroditus and Adonis, who still doesn’t react to the allures of women. Just like the youth in the first seventeen sonnets, Adonis is advised to seek a mate and have children so that his beauty may defeat “devouring time”.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding
are the words directed at Wriothesley in Sonnet 1. - In “Venus and Adonis”, Venus, the goddess of love tenderly scolds Adonis with the words:
Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,
Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?
By law of nature thou art bound to breed,
That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;
And so in spite of death thou dost survive,
In that thy likeness still is left alive.
(Venus and Adonis, 169-174)
Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (1573–1624)
2. Two years before “Venus and Adonis” was published, John Clapham wrote a Latin poem with the title “Narcissus” (1591) and dedicated it to Southampton. Clapham’s Narcissus is suddenly transferred from Greek mythology to a fairy-tale England, where Venus welcomes him with open arms and Amor teaches him the art of love. Narcissus is splashed with the waters of the river Lethe, causing him to forget everything he ever knew. He mounts a wild horse named “Lust” which carries him far away and throws him off by the fountain of self desire. Narcissus drinks from the fountain, falls in love with the reflection that he sees of himself in the water and drowns.
John Clapham wasn’t just an aspiring amateur; he was a member of Lord Burghley’s household and probably one of Southampton’s teachers. This means that the young man was not only given a poetical, but also a practical lesson in life, after his refusal to marry Elizabeth de Vere, against Lord Burghley’s advice.
3. In his preface to “The Unfortunate Traveller” (1594), the satirist Thomas Nashe, a literary contemporary made a bold comment on Southampton’s erotic magnetism:
“A dear lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of poets as of poets themselves. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe myself, though now and then I speak English.”
Nashe went a step further by dedicating a ribald poem by the name of “The Choosing of Valentines” to “Lord S.” In the dedication Nashe plays on the phonetic similarity between Wriothesley and ROSE-ly; with the words: “Pardon sweet flower of matchless poetry,/ And fairest bud the red rose did ever bare;/ Although my Muse, divorced from deeper care,/ present thee with a wanton Elegy.” The poem describes a sexual encounter in a brothel whereby the man is so excited that he is unable to “do his duty” and how the girl “helps herself”. - We don’t know if Nashe meant to amuse and entertain or if the poem was intended as a provocation.
In his book “Wriothesley’s Roses” (1993) Martin Green shows us how SHAKESPEARE never tired of making plays on Wriothesley’s name and its association with roses. The associations were programmatic right from the first sonnet of the cycle.
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
Sonnet 54 compares the virtues of the youth with the sweet scent of a rose:
O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
In Sonnet 95 the poet chides the youth and speaks of “the beauty of thy budding name”:
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
which like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
Shakespeare copiously plays on the young man’s flowery name: “Why should poor beauty indirectly seek, / Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?” (67). – “More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, / But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee.” (99). – “For nothing this wide universe I call, / Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.” (109).
The class system of the sixteenth century forbade that a commoner should speak to an aristocrat in the second person singular (thou art etc.) and thereby write a poem that made reference to his penis (Nr. 20: “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”), that he publicly criticises Wriothesley’s deceitful behaviour when he had sex with another man’s girl-friend. (Nr. 40: “I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest, / But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest / By wilful taste of what thy self refusest. / I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief / Although thou steal thee all my poverty.” – Nr. 41: “Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, / And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth, / Who lead thee in their riot even there / Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:/ Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, / Thine by thy beauty being false to me.”)
It would have been unthinkable for an actor and his girl-friend to enter into a three-way relationship with an Earl. If the actor had then deliberately made the relationship public, he would have been guilty of a serious offence. (Nr. 133, to the Dark Lady: “Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan / For that deep wound it gives my friend and me; / Is’t not enough to torture me alone, /But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?/ Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken, / And my next self thou harder hast engrossed, / Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken, / A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed.”)
In order to come to the gigantic misconception that William Shaksper, the actor, could possibly have moved so freely in the house and in the company of Henry Wriothesly only to betray him with such verses; one must be totally ignorant of the political and social situation of the times.
The Stratfordians’ most desperate argument is that the “author” William Shaksper invented these most singular relationships: the man and the woman- the woman and the other man- the man and the man- as an imaginary trio in a hypothetical situation- devoid of any auto-biographical substance.
Are we really being asked to believe that the greatest, the most explicit author of all times should write so passionately and vehemently about three imaginary friends; that he lied to us and the youth in question! That he said “Me” without being “Me”?!
Any scholar who propagates such theories is better advised to consider