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Q: Shakespeare's "fair youth" ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Shakespeare's "fair youth"
Category: Arts and Entertainment
Asked by: mosquitoblinker-ga
List Price: $30.00
Posted: 31 Oct 2005 13:03 PST
Expires: 30 Nov 2005 13:03 PST
Question ID: 587165
I read that the ?fair youth? of Shakespeare's sonnets was an Earl.
Where can I find out more about this?
Answer  
Subject: Re: Shakespeare's "fair youth"
Answered By: pinkfreud-ga on 31 Oct 2005 14:19 PST
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
There have been many speculations about the identity of the "fair
youth" of Shakespeare's sonnets. One of the individuals most often
mentioned (and my own choice as the most likely candidate) is Henry
Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton.

Another possibility is that the "fair youth" is William Herbert, third
Earl of Pembroke. More commonly, however, he is identified as "Mr
W.H.", while the "fair youth" is thought to be a different individual
(usually, as mentioned above, the Earl of Southampton).

I've gathered some information for you on this interesting subject.
For reasons of copyright, I am posting brief excerpts here; for more
in-depth information, you can click the link below each excerpt to
read the full text of the article.

"Out of all the candidates put forward for the Fair Youth, the most
convincing has been Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southhampton. 
Below is a brief biography:

Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (1573-1624) Contemporary of
Shakespeare, a patron of the arts to whom Shakespeare dedicated Venus
and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). These two
dedications are the only certain connection between Shakespeare and
Southampton; they were written in the hope of patronage?financial
support?from the young nobleman. The first dedication is an ordinary
approach by a poet seeking backing from someone he does not know well,
but the second reflects considerable friendship between patron and
poet. Unlike any other dedication of the period, it is confident of
the support it seeks and it radiates an air of intimacy. The poet may
have spent some time during the plague years of 1592 to 1594?the
period during which he wrote the poems?at Southampton's estate. An
18th-century account attributed to William Davenant the information
that Southampton had given Shakespeare £1000, and though the amount is
much too large to be believed?perhaps 10 to 20 times Shakespeare's
annual income at the time?there may be a germ of truth to the story.
Some scholars believe that Southampton may be the young man to whom
most of the Sonnets are addressed, or the mysterious 'Mr W. H'. to
whom they are dedicated by the publisher. This cannot be proven, but
that the two men were friends is accepted by most scholars."

Hudson Shakespeare Company: Fair Youth Sonnets
http://www.hudsonshakespeare.org/Shakespeare%20Library/Poetry/Young%20Man%20sonnets.htm

"Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (1573-1624) 
Ward of Sir William Cecil after the death of his father (1581). Came
to court in 1590. Cecil, as his guardian, then ordered him to marry
Elizabeth de Vere, Oxford's eldest daughter. Sonnets 1-17 may concern
this marriage (they are similar to a poem about his marriage known to
be addressed to him, John Clapham's Narcissus, 1591). Shakespeare
dedicated Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) to
him. Southampton is frequently identified with the Fair Youth of the
Sonnets."

Chasing Shakespeares: Cast of Characters
http://www.sarahsmith.com/chasingshakespeares/book_and_background/chasing%20shakespeares%20extras/finished_cast_o_characters.htm

"Once upon a time, an internecine war was waged among Stratfordians
about the identity of the Fair Youth of the Sonnets, but ever since
the discovery that Mary Fitton, the Earl of Pembroke's mistress, was
not, after all, a dark lady, the claim of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl
of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare's two narrative poems were
dedicated, has gone almost unchallenged. Not that Southampton's Dark
Lady has been identified, but?dark ladies being equally elusive?his
was the better claim. Since that time, perhaps for want of a serious
rival to Southampton, and certainly for want of any evidence
connecting Southampton with the player from Stratford, or either with
a dark lady, the interest of orthodox scholars in the sonnets, as
biographical data, has waned."

Shakespeare Authorship Sourcebook: The Six Loves of Shakespeare
http://www.sourcetext.com/sourcebook/library/bowen/reviews/0benezet.htm

"Shakespeare's sonnets are dedicated to a Mr W.H. and addressed to a
'dark lady', generally identified as Anne Hathaway, and a mysterious
male-bodied 'fair youth' who is described as having 'a woman's face'
and 'a woman's heart' The poems directed to the youth have a long
history of strategic critical neglect, allocation to an otherwise
virtually empty genre of male friendship poems. More recently,
however, they have been generally regarded as homoerotic poems.

There has been a great deal of speculation as to who WH and the youth
might be, and an increasingly strong contender for both roles is Henry
Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron and the
dedicatee of other poems. However, the discovery in 2002 of the
portrait of the Earl of Southampton dressed and made up as a woman
invites enquiry into the issues Shakespeare was addressing."

The 6th International Congress on Sex and Gender Diversity:The Master
Mistress of my Passion
http://www.pfc.org.uk/congress/abstr6/abs-009.htm

"Art experts and historians have denied a recently identified painting
of William Shakespeare's patron can be used as evidence that the bard
was gay. The painting of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton,
was originally thought to be of a woman - Lady Norton, daughter of the
Bishop of Winton.
 
The picture shows a man in frilly clothes, with long hair, an earring
and wearing what appears to be lipstick. Academics have long argued
over the sexuality of the playwright and poet with many believing his
some of his sonnets, written to a 'fair youth', prove he was gay."

BBC News: Painting sparks bard sexuality debate
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/1943632.stm

"Experts who have studied the facts now agree that the portrait is
undoubtedly the earliest known image of the third Earl of Southampton
- Shakespeare's patron, the 'fair youth' addressed in his sonnets -
somewhere between the age of 17 and 20 and painted at exactly the time
those first few sonnets were written...

Despite a notorious lack of hard evidence about the facts of
Shakespeare's life, there has long been fierce argument between two
rival camps: those who interpret the sonnets as autobiographical, and
those who insist they do not necessarily reflect the poet's private
life, let alone his sexual predilections, merely the preoccupations of
a poet writing to commission...

Whatever the truth about Shakespeare's sexuality, which seems likely,
as was the case then as now in the theatre, to have been flexible, the
dramatic discovery of the Cobbe portrait of the young, effeminate
Southampton is bound to relaunch a tidal wave of debate."

Guardian Unlimited: That's no lady, that's... 
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,687778,00.html

"To put the finishing touch on his bitterness, he finds that the two
persons he loves have begun to love one another the good one, the Fair
Youth, is being tempted by the bad one, the Dark Lady.

The sonnets are widely regarded as containing autobiographical
references. The identity of the Dark Lady is not known, but two men
are often suggested as the Fair Youth: Henry Wriothesley, earl of
Southampton, and William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, nephew of Sir
Philip Sidney."

University of Kansas: LITERARY MOVEMENTS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
http://www.ku.edu/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/20.html

"Turning to the Sonnets, where it is reasonable to believe that he
would more directly use material from his own life, there are four
mysterious individuals to be identified: the dedicatee 'Mr W.H.' and -
in the poems themselves - the 'Fair Youth', the 'Dark Lady', and the
'Rival Poet'.

Harris' thesis has two strands, the first being that Shakespeare had
the habit of depicting himself in his characters, including those as
various as Hamlet, Macbeth or Posthumus from Cymbeline. In this way he
builds up a picture of a gentle, amorous, music-loving bard who
suffers from a poor constitution, is prone to melancholy and - like
Cassio in Othello - cannot hold his liquor.

His other main idea is the identification of the Dark Lady as one Mary
Fitton, a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth I, and both Mr W.H. and
the Fair Youth as William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (this theory was
originated by Thomas Tyler and also taken up by Bernard Shaw for his
play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets). The Rival Poet is Chapman, the
adaptor of Homer."

OddBooks: Review of "The Man Shakespeare"
http://www.oddbooks.co.uk/harris/manshakespeare.html

"Mr. W.H., person known only by his initials, to whom the first
edition of William Shakespeare's sonnets (1609) was dedicated... The
mystery of his identity has tantalized generations of biographers and
critics, who have generally argued either that W.H. was also the 'fair
youth' to whom many of the sonnets are addressed or that he was a
friend or patron who earned the gratitude of one or both parties by
procuring Shakespeare's manuscript for the printer, Thomas Thorpe.
Among the names offered for consideration are those of Henry
Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southhampton, who was a noted patron of
several writers, and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, with whom
Shakespeare is believed to have had some connection, albeit slight."

Encyclopędia Britannica's Guide to Shakespeare: W.H., Mr.
http://search.eb.com/shakespeare/article-9076725

"Many scholars have sought to identify the 'fair youth' addressed in
the first 126 sonnets, the 'dark lady' addressed in the following 28
(or 26) sonnets, and the 'rival poet' to whom periodic references are
made in the "fair youth" poems. Shakespeare himself left but a single
clue in a cryptic dedication of the 1609 collection to a 'Mr. W.H.'
(although there is some doubt about the authenticity of even this
slight inscription). On the basis of this fragment, ingenious efforts
have been made to 'find' the presumed patron of the Sonnets among
Shakespeare's contemporaries, William Herbert (the Earl of Pembroke)
and Henry Wriothesley (the Earl of Southampton) being the prime
candidates. Affirmations concerning a possible relationship between
Shakespeare and one of these noblemen have been sought from
biographies and other records of these men, particularly Southampton,
but the correspondences are not clear enough or strong enough to
justify equating any historical person with the young man of the
Sonnets."

About Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Sonnets
http://www.about-shakespeare.com/sonnets.php

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: shakespeare sonnets "fair youth" "earl of southampton"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=shakespeare+sonnets+%22fair+youth%22+%22earl+of+southampton%22

Google Web Search: "earl of pembroke" "fair youth"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22earl+of+pembroke%22+%22fair+youth%22

I hope this is helpful! If anything is unclear or incomplete, please
request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further assistance before
you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud
mosquitoblinker-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Thanks!  Looks like there's not total agreement on the answer, but
this gives me all the opinions on the issue, and your answer is very
complete.

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