THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN 219
The question of who is meant
by “Mr. W. H.” is a long-standing
mystery in literary history. Some of
the sonnets are clearly addressed
to a man, or boy (“sweet boy,”
No. 108, “my lovely boy,” No. 126),
and it has often been supposed
that Thorpe is thinking of this
person as the “begetter” of the
sonnets. Two candidates are Henry
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,
dedicatee of the narrative poems,
and William Herbert, Earl of
Pembroke, dedicatee of the
First Folio of 1623. But neither
man was properly addressed as
“Mr.” and Southampton’s initials
are “H. W.,” not “W. H.” Also,
“begetter” might simply mean
the person who supplied the
manuscript. Nobody really knows
what Thorpe meant—and trying
to work it out now is, according to
poet W. H. Auden, “an idiot’s job.”
There is good reason to believe
that Shakespeare wrote his
sonnets, sometimes singly,
sometimes in interrelated batches,
over a long period of time. Probably
the first sonnet he wrote—maybe
even his first attempt at verse—
is No. 145 (see p.220 for the full
poem), irregular in that it is written
in octosyllabics, that is, eight-
syllabled lines instead of the usual
ten. The reason it is believed to
have been written so early is partly
that it is light in tone and not very
sophisticated in technique, but
mainly that in the last two lines
the words “hate” and “away” pun
on the name of the woman he
married when he was 18, Anne
Hathaway. It is a wooing poem.
It looks as if Shakespeare himself
put the poems into the order in
which they are printed. Some stand
alone as independent poems, but ❯❯Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my belovèd as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs
and praises be
To one, of one, still such,
and ever so.
Sonnet 105Sonnet 145 may have been written by
a young Shakespeare as he courted his
future wife, Anne Hathaway. She came
from a prosperous family and lived in
this home outside Stratford-upon-Avon.