Part 26 (1/2)
Mayhap some enthusiast may, by digging amongst old deeds and papers, light upon some reference to him, but until then his hypothesis can be only regarded as an ingenious, though highly interesting speculation.
Parenthetically it may be mentioned, although the fact is only known to very few, that an artist friend of Oscar Wilde, whose work is the admiration of all connoisseurs, had, under his direction, painted exactly such a panel-portrait as described, employing all the arts of the forger of antiquities in its production, and that a young poet whose recently published volume of verse had caused considerable sensation in literary circles had sat for the likeness.
The points Wilde advances in confirmation of his theory are as follows:--
1. That the young man to whom Shakespeare addresses sonnets must have been someone who was really a vital factor in the development of his dramatic art, and that this could not be said of either Lord Pembroke or Lord Southampton.
2. That the Sonnets, as we learn from Meres, were written before 1598 and that his friends.h.i.+p with W. H. had already lasted three years when Sonnet CIV. was written, which would fix the date of its commencement as 1594, or at latest 1595, that Lord Pembroke was born in 1580 and did not come to London till he was eighteen (_i.e._ 1598) so that Shakespeare could not have met him till after the sonnet had been written; and that Pembroke's father did not die till 1601, whereas W. H.'s father was dead in 1598, as is proved by the line--
”You had a father, let your son say so.”
3. That Lord Southampton had early in life become the lover of Elizabeth Vernon, so required no urging to enter the state of matrimony, that he was not dowered with good looks, and that he did not remember his mother as W. H. did. (Thou art thy mother's gla.s.s, and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime), and moreover that his Christian name being Henry he could not be the Will to whom the punning sonnets (Cx.x.xV. and CXLIII.) are addressed.
4. That W. H. is none other than the boy actor for whom Shakespeare created the parts of Viola, Imogen, Juliet, Rosalind, Portia, Desdemona and Cleopatra.
5. That the boy's name was Hughes.
These points he proves from the Sonnets themselves. As regards No. 1 he writes: ”to look upon him as simply the object of certain love poems is to miss the whole meaning of the poems; for the art of which Shakespeare talks in the Sonnets is not the art of the Sonnets themselves, which indeed were to him but slight and secret things, it is the art of the dramatist to which he is always alluding. He proceeds to quote the lines:
”Thou art all my art and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance.”
2 and 3 effectually dispose of the pretensions of Pembroke and Surrey.
4. The theory of the very actor he praises by the fine sonnet:--
”'How can my Muse want subject to invent, While thou dost breathe, thou pour'st into my verse Thine own sweet argument, too excellent For every vulgar paper to rehea.r.s.e?
O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me Worthy perusal stand against thy sight: For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, When thou thyself dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth Than those old nine, which rhymers invocate; And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth Eternal numbers to outlive long date.'”
The name of the boy he discovers in the eighth line of the 20th sonnet, where W. H. is punningly described as--
”_A man in hew, all Hews in his contrawling_,”
and draws attention to the fact that ”In the original edition of the sonnets 'Hews' is printed with a capital H and in italics,” and draws corroboration from ”these sonnets in which curious puns are made on the words 'use' and 'usury.'”
Another point he touches on is that Will Hughes abandoned Shakespeare's company to enter the service of Chapman, or more probably of Marlowe. He proves this from the lines--
”But when your countenance filled up his line Then lack I matter; that enfeebled mine”--
as also
”Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, But now my gracious numbers are decayed, And my sick nurse does give another place”;
and further by
”Every alien pen has got my use And under thee their poesy disperse,”
and draws attention to the ”obvious” play upon words (use = Hughes).