[[7]] Including at least three which do not have in all respects the regular sonnet form.
[[8]] Southampton's chief rival for this position in the opinion of scholars has been William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. One point in his favor has been that the initials W. H. (supposed to stand for William Herbert) are given as those of the person to whom the dedication of the volume was addressed by its publisher. Mr. Sidney Lee thinks, however, that this is a dedication by the printer to the printer's friend, not by Shakespeare to Shakespeare's friend,—a possible, though not wholly convincing, explanation. The First Folio was dedicated to Herbert after Shakespeare's death, but we have no evidence that the two men were intimate friends while living. Meres mentions the sonnets of Shakespeare in 1598, so part of them at least must have been written before that year; but Herbert did not have a permanent residence in London until 1598, and was then only eighteen years old.
CHAPTER VI
THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE's PLAYS
The most profitable method of studying any writer is to take up his works in the order in which they were written. More and more this method is being adopted toward all authors, ancient and modern, Virgil or Milton, Dante or Tennyson. We are thus enabled to trace the gradual growth of the poet's mind from one production to another,—his constant increase in skill, in judgment, in knowledge of mankind. The great characteristic of the genius is, not simply that he knows more than other men at first, but that he has in him such vast possibilities of growth, of improving with time, and learning by his own mistakes. Consequently, it is very important to know that a certain play or poem is faulty because it was its author's first crude attempt; that a second is better because it was written five years later in the light of added experience; and that a third is better still because it came ten years after the second, at the climax of the writer's powers.
Besides showing the author's growth, this method also shows his relation to the great literary movements of his time. As fashions in dress and sports keep shifting, fashions in literature are changing just as constantly, and the dominant type may alter two or three times during one man's life. If an author changes to meet these demands, it is important to know that one of his plays was merry comedy because written at a time when merry comedies filled all the playhouses; and that another is sober tragedy because composed while most of the theaters were acting and demanding sober tragedy.