To whatever cause we owe it, the Sonnets were published in 1609, long after the vogue of sonneteering had passed, by T. T., i.e. Thomas Thorpe, with an address to Mr. W. H. The chief battlefield in the history of the sonnets has been over the meaning of those initials. I believe, as I have said above, that they mean Mr. William Harvey.
Sir Thomas Heneage had died in 1595, leaving the Countess of Southampton the second time a widow, in trouble over his bills, and not over well treated by her friends. Shortly after her son’s stolen marriage to Elizabeth Vernon in 1598 she had promised to marry her faithful friend, now her knight, Sir William Harvey. Her action roused the indignation of her son at first, and caused discomfort among her friends. Harvey’s family and position were not equal to hers, and matrimony in a mother is sometimes inconvenient to a son. The Earl of Essex himself took the trouble to counsel her gravely. But like her son she held her own way through thick and thin, and married Sir William Harvey that same year. She died in 1607, and it was reported by Chamberlain that “she had left the best part of her stuff to her son, and the most part to her husband.” It is very likely that a manuscript copy of “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” would be left among “the most part,” and it is quite possible that after consultation with Southampton and Shakespeare, Harvey, always a patron of letters, prepared them himself to be published.
Thomas Thorpe was too glad of the chance of becoming a merchant adventurer on the sea of publication. If, as I have shown to have been possible, Sir William had, in the first instance, suggested the writing of the early sonnets, the meaning of Thorpe’s address is clear. It was quite usual to address a gentleman as “Mr.” after his knighthood. Lady Southampton always spoke of her second husband as Mr. Heneage. Further, since the death of his first wife, in 1607, Sir William had consoled himself with a bright young bride, Mistress Cordelia Ansley, of Lee. It would therefore be perfectly consonant with Thorpe’s gratitude and his character to wish “Mr. W. H. all happinesse, and that eternitie promised by the everlasting poet.”
The “eternity” intended might have been that of a long line of descendants to keep up his noble name[40] (for it was a Thorpe who wrote the address).
It may be urged that I cannot prove this. I acknowledge it. But surely an explanation so simple and one that fits so naturally into the whole known series of facts, may be justly considered and duly treated as a good working hypothesis, until something better may be discovered.[41] And the surest way to learn more of Shakespeare is to learn more about his friends.
“Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature,”
vol. xxviii (read 24th June 1908).
PS.—I had embodied most of these facts in the preface to my edition of “Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” 1904 (De La More Press) and in my articles in the “Athenæum.”
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Greene’s “Groatsworth of Wit,” 1592.