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THE YOUNG MAN OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

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Who was the Young Man addressed within the first 126 of Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets?

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THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS OF THE SONNETS

One of the many intriguing aspects of Shakespeare's Sonnets is the identity of the principal characters within them, of which there are three:

- The Young Man

- The Dark Lady

- The Rival Poet

Nowhere in the Sonnets are these people explicitly identified and their anonymity has spawned much debate as to who these people could have been. The content of the Sonnets that refer to these people however, undoubtedly show that these were indeed real, living people and not imaginary inventions by the author for the sake of literary exercise.

Many poets of the Elizabethan and Jacobean age wrote verse to others and did not refrain from identifying who they were addressing. Some poems were clearly dedicated to the addressees, such as Spenser's Prothalamion which is dedicated "in honovr of the dovble marriage of the two Honorable & vertuous Ladies, the Ladie Elizabeth and the Ladie Katherine Somerset, Daughters to the Right Honourable the Earle of Worcester and espoused to the two worthie Gentlemen M. Henry Gilford, and M. William Peter Esquyers". And Spenser makes clear that the poem is about the Somerset ladies within the poem itself by punning on their names in the 4th. stanza:

"But rather Angels or of Angels breede:
Yet were they bred of Somers-heat they say".

Where poems were not explicitly dedicated to the addressee their identity could still be found in the poem's verse, such as in Sidney's Astrophel and Stella:

"Doth euen grow rich, meaning my Stellaes name" and

"Rich in all beauties which mans eye can see;
Beauties so farre from reach of words that we
Abase her praise saying she doth excell;
Rich in the treasure of deseru'd renowne,
Rich in the riches of a royall heart,
Rich in those gifts which giue th'eternall crowne;
Who, though most rich in these and eu'ry part
Which make the patents of true worldy blisse,
Hath no misfortune but that Rich she is."

Here, Sidney expresses his dismay at his lover's marriage to another man which made her Lady Rich.

Perhaps Shakespeare's principal characters were left anonymous as they were still living at the time of the Sonnets' publication and their identification would have been problematic for them. But perhaps we can still identify the characters from the material:

THE FIRST 17 SONNETS

These sonnets are addressed to a young man of exceptional beauty who is encouraged to father children. What is striking about this series is:

- There are exactly 17 sonnets that are all centred on encouraging the young man to marry and father children. Seventeen is an unusual and distinctive number that seems to indicate its own significance. The content of the sonnets shows no evidence of input to them from outside of the author during their development: no questions are answered, there is no change of direction in response to any feedback from the subject, they appear to be a preset series issued together. The deliberate intent of these sonnets and the fact that a sonnet itself conforms to regular numbering schemes also suggests that the series containing precisely 17 is not accidental.

- The encouragement of a person to marry and father children is an unusual theme, if not unique, in the world of Elizabethan poetry. That the author himself should have been personally motivated to invest such time and effort and have the temerity to do such a thing strikes me as extremely unlikely. In an age of commissioned poetic works, this series of sonnets being commissioned from the author by another party seems to be the most plausible scenario by which such a poetic work could only come about.

- The series betrays a lack of understanding of why the subject fails to marry and have children of his own accord:

Sonnet 3 asks what fair woman would not welcome the opportunity of being the subject's wife:

"For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?"

and what man would willingly fail to leave children:

"Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love to stop posterity?"

Sonnet 4 asks why the subject does not continue his legacy of beauty:

"Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?"

and why he fails to pass on his beauty in the form of children:

"Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?"

and what he will leave behind him when has died:

"Then how when nature calls thee to be gone:
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?"

Sonnet 6 asks what defeated death could do if the subject leaves children:

"Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?"

Sonnet 9 asks whether he doesn't marry because he does not wish to face the prospect of leaving a widow:

"Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consum'st thyself in single life?"

Sonnet 13 asks what man fails to commit to being a husband to enable his own beauty to be passed on to his offspring as his beauty declines:

"Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day,
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?"

Sonnet 16 asks why the subject fails to fortify himself against time by having children which is a better way to tackle time than the author's verse:

"But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, time,
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?"
 

There are no answers provided to these questions, but it is clear that the young man's contemporaries were unable to explain the subject's failure to commit to the naturally expected step of marrying and fathering children.

THE YOUNG MAN's SEXUALITY IN SONNETS 1 TO 17

Why would a man need to be encouraged to marry and father children? Why would the verse written to encourage him to do so contain so many questions as to why he fails to do so of his own accord? Why would the verse fail to provide any answers to these questions and instead explore a variety of possible reasons none of which are accepted or refused? How many men, and women, have there been who have grimaced at other people's question: "When are you going to settle down, get married and have children?"

It strikes me that the type of person who is impassive to such pleas and who fails to make such a commitment of his own accord would either have a profound objection to the woman whom he is being married off to, or is inevitably a homosexual. This assertion is supported by Sonnet 20:

THE YOUNG MAN's SEXUALITY IN SONNET 20

After the first 17 sonnets, the author proceeds to memorialise the subject in his own verse. That the subject will not marry and have children as he has been previously encouraged to do seems to have been accepted and the relationship that has been established between the poet and the subject via the commission has now developed into a typical one of patron/poet. Sonnet 18 is a clear break from the theme of the first 17 and demarcates the 1-17 series.

In Sonnet 20, the poet writes a sonnet in which he explicitly encourages a heterosexual orientation for the subject. A full critique of this poem is provided here.

What is key to this sonnet is its clear and graphic sexuality. The sonnet is explicitly centred on the making of a man by Nature who could have been made a man or a woman given the person's beauty. The sonnet then determines that Nature, female in gender, chose to make him a man for selfish female reasons, and so defined his sexual capacity and indeed defined to whom it should be literally "used" on. Sexually, it's very clearly a statement about which direction the young man should be channelling his sexual efforts into. The most unequivocal line stating this is:

"She pricked thee out for women's pleasure"

which is an explicitly sexual statement by the author that the subject has been made by Nature for pleasuring women.

A heterosexual man doesn't need to be told that he is equipped for sexual relations with women. It's obvious to him and comes naturally. Such explicit and direct advice however is entirely compatible with it being addressed to a man who has homosexual tendencies, and especially one whose family and guardians are seeking to guide him into a heterosexual relationship that he has failed to indulge in voluntarily.

In addition, what man would appreciate being described as having:

"A woman's face with nature's own hand painted...
A woman's gentle heart...
And for a woman wert thou first created..."

if not an effeminate one?

Equally, homosexual relations are explicitly discouraged by the author via:

"And by addition me of thee defeated
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing."

In other words: "by providing you with an addition (the male sexual organ), Nature has defeated any prospect of a sexual relationship between me and thee. Nature has added one thing to you (the male sexual organ) when deciding whether to make you a man or a woman, and in so doing has added nothing to my purpose, i.e. hasn't done me any favours by making you a man".

This all points to the young man having homosexual tendencies.

SHAKESPEARE's SEXUALITY

Much has been written about Shakespeare's own sexuality with some finding reason to suspect he had homosexual tendencies. This sonnet however is where those theories are unequivocally rejected.

The facts regarding Shakespeare's sexual orientation are that:

- he was married and fathered 3 children

- his plays and sonnets are packed with enthusiastic references to heterosexual activity including cunnilingus, fellatio given by women, and heterosexual sex

- there is a conspicuous absence of homosexuality in the canon.

- Troilus and Cressida Act 5, Scene 1 contains the only explicit reference in the canon to homosexuality, and it is an unsympathetic one:

Thersites: "Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases of the south, guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o’ gravel i’ th’ back, lethargies, cold palsies, and the like, take and take again such preposterous discoveries!"

- this sonnet specifically says that the subject's being a man defeats any prospect of sexuality between the two and that the subject should be being sexually active with women.

THE YOUNG MAN's IDENTITY IN SONNET 20

Aside from the explicit heterosexual encouragement, Sonnet 20 is distinctive in its preponderance of references to the word Hew. As demonstrated in my critique here:

- every line in the poem has the word hew or hue embedded in it.

- the word Hews is italicised in the original Quarto publication of the sonnet clearly suggesting significance, as it is not a remarkable word in its own right and not the name of a classical figure that one might expect to be italicised, like Mars is elsewhere in the Sonnets.

- The words hew and hews appear in line 7, the centre line of the sonnet.

- several other sonnets addressed to the young man contain the word hew, such as Sonnet 82

Hew, undoubtedly carries significance to identifying the young man, especially in Sonnet 20.

THE YOUNG MAN's IDENTITY

In my observation, the young man has the following attributes:

- he is a young man of exceptional beauty whose beauty is virtually feminine.

- he has many people around him who wish him to marry and father children.

- their desire to see him commit to this includes commissioning a series of specifically 17 sonnets from a demonstrably very capable poet.

- marrying and fathering children doesn't come naturally to him, or at the very least marrying a woman whom he is groomed for: it is something that he has to be explicitly encouraged to do.

- he had homosexual tendencies, at least at the time these sonnets were written.

- the word hew has great relevance to him.

- Southampton's father, the 2nd. Earl of Southampton died in 1581 which is consistent with Sonnet 13's "You had a father; let your son say so".

The man who fits these attributes is Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (1573–1624).

Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, was Lord Burghley's Ward of Court who had tried to persuade Southampton to marry his grand-daughter, Elizabeth de Vere. In 1591, the Clerk of Chancery, John Clapham, dedicated a Latin poem on the story of Narcissus to Southampton, which appears to have had the same intention as these sonnets in flattering the Earl's beauty and encouraging him to marry and have children. Southampton eventually suffered a £5000 fine rather than go through with this marriage.

Southampton's 17th. birthday was in October 1590, one year before Clapham dedicated the Narcissus story to him. The gift of 17 sonnets would seem to be an apposite gift to Southampton on his 17th. birthday, an age when youths were typically expected to be married in Elizabethan times. Southampton was also presented at court at age 17.

Hew, is of course, an acronym of Henry Wriothesley, and Hews is an anagrammatic acronym of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd. Earl of Southampton. His name also appears to be being punned on in Sonnet 20's

"Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting"

wrought thee apparently being a pun on the surname Wriothesley and in Sonnet 38's

            "For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee"

Wriothesley was Shakespeare's patron to whom he dedicated Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594).

The issue of Wriothesley's sexuality is, inevitably, not possible to resolve outside of these sonnets. There are no extraneous records that throw light on such a private matter but it is significant that Southampton did eventually marry in 1598 at the age of 25 and did go on to father a daughter named Penelope born 8th. November 1598 and a son named Thomas born 10th. March 1607/8. It is intriguing that Southampton fits the apparent clues in the sonnets but it will probably only remain a matter of conjecture as to what his sexual orientation may have been at the age of 17.

I believe Wriothesley is finally and conclusively identified as the Young Man in Sonnet 126.

                    References: The Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Oxford University Press - W.J. Craig
                                      The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare - MJF Books, New York - Campbell & Quinn

Recommended Website: Complete Works