Sonnets and minor poems Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ARGUMENT Those who suppose the Sonnets have a real story to tell have proposed, successively, that the beloved boy, to whom the larger division is addressed (... more »1-126) was: William Harte, the poet's nephew, suggested by Farmer; William Hughes, suggested by Tyrwhitt; Henry Wriothes- ley, the Earl of Southampton (born Oct. 6, 1573, died Nov. Id, 1624), first suggested by Drake (1817); William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke (born Apr. 9, 1580, died Apr. 10, 1630), first suggested about the same time (1832) by B. H. Bright and James Boaden, independently of each other. VajQusother wild guesses need not be recorded.- (vs.-k/o" Little more than the coincidence of the initials, 'W. H.,' agreeing with the dedication of the volume of 1609, belongs to the first two suggestions. Malone at once showed that the first was impossible by the entry of baptism, in the Stratford Parish Register, equivalent to the birth of William Harte, in 1600. The mention of 'Hews' in Sonnet 20 was the precarious foundation for the second suggestion. A fanciful theory was of late cleverly worked up by Oscar Wilde into a story of Shakespeare's love for a boy-actor named Willy Hughes. This theory was described as held by two men who killed themselves to attest their belief in it and thus persuade their friends of it. 'Willy Hughes's' name does not appear in any list of actors. This quite probable but utterly unprovable theory is obviously devised to make fun of the more serious autobiographical theories. All such theories have now crystallized along either Herbertist or Southamptonist lines. For the last two suggestions, much that was in itself of interest biographically and historically could be brought forward and urged in application to the case supposed. Favor has been largely diverted, in consequence, f...« less