Jan 05
Shakespeare's "fair youth" Best answer on the web
nomorebetter.comAnother 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 , 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."
Encyclop dia 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