Sonnet 104

“Sonnet 104” is one of the sonnets addressed to the “fair youth” (as literary critics dub him) that make up the first 126 of William Shakespeare’s 154-sonnet sequence. There has been much speculation over the years about the identity of the youth, although some commentators suggest that the sonnets may not be autobiographical. It is more likely, they say, that Shakespeare simply wanted to explore in sonnet form themes of love, beauty, and time, as well as the emotional entanglements and jealousies that come into play with the entry of the “rival poet” (Sonnets 78-86) and the “dark lady” (Sonnets 127-52). Those who believe the sonnets are autobiographical, however, point out that these are the only poems in which Shakespeare writes in the first person, and he also refers to his name as “Will” and puns on it (Sonnets 135, 136, 143). Therefore, many readers, believing that Shakespeare is telling a personal story, are curious about the identity of the friend. Various candidates have been put forward as to who he might be, but the two who are mentioned most frequently are Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, (1573-1624) and William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke (1580-1630).

Shakespeare dedicated both his narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), to the Earl of Southampton, so it is likely that Southampton was his patron. Southampton was of a much higher rank than Shakespeare, which seems to match the way the speaker in the sonnets refers to the fair youth. The first 17 sonnets, in which the poet calls on the fair youth to marry and beget male heirs in order to preserve his beauty against the onslaught of time, may also point to Southampton. In the first half of the 1590s, Southampton went against the wishes of his guardian and family by refusing to marry Elizabeth Vere, and he even paid a hefty fine in 1595 to avoid such an outcome. (He reneged on a promise to marry her, apparently.) If Southampton was indeed the fair youth, this suggests that those 17 sonnets were written in the early to mid-1590s.

One problem is the uncertainty about the period of time in which Shakespeare wrote the sonnets. Francis Meres in his book Palladis Tamia (1598) mentioned that the sonnets circulated privately among Shakespeare’s friends. Just over a decade later, in 1609, they were published by Thomas Thorpe, who dedicated them to “Mr. W. H.,” whom he described as their “onlie begetter.” The initials W. H. are a reversal of Southampton’s initials, which would argue against Southampton being the fair youth, although some claim that the initials were reversed in order to protect Southampton’s identity. If a later dating of the sonnets is preferred, Southampton would have been a little old to be referred to as a “lovely boy” (“Sonnet 126”) or “sweet boy” (“Sonnet 108”). Moreover, Southampton did eventually marry, in 1598, which would also seem to rule out, if he was the fair youth, a later date of composition.

Those who argue in favor of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, as the fair youth point out that his initials match those of the “onlie begetter” in Thorpe’s dedication. Pembroke was well known as a patron of the arts and was one of the two dedicatees of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s works published in 1623. (The other was Herbert’s brother, Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery.) It also appears that Herbert—who did not become the Earl of Pembroke until 1601—was even more averse to marriage than Southampton. He fiercely resisted attempts in 1595 to get him to marry Elizabeth Carey, and in 1597 he had the same attitude to marrying Bridget de Vere. Known as a very good-looking young man, Herbert moved to London in 1598, where he had an affair with Mary Fitton, an attendant of Queen Elizabeth I, but he refused to marry her, even though she was pregnant. (He eventually married Mary Talbot in 1604.) It is possible that Shakespeare knew the Herbert family, since, in the early 1590s, he may have written and acted in plays produced by a theatrical company of which Herbert’s father was the patron. There is no evidence, however, that William Herbert was ever Shakespeare’s patron or that he even knew Shakespeare directly. Some commentators have also observed that, as with Southampton, it would be unlikely for Thorpe to refer to Herbert as “Mr.” in the dedication.

Be that as it may, if Herbert is preferred as the fair youth, it would argue for a later date of composition of the sonnets, since, in the early 1590s, Herbert would have been barely into his teens. One renowned 20th-century Shakespearean editor and scholar, John Dover Wilson, was so confident that Pembroke was the fair youth that he even declared, in his introduction to the Cambridge University Press edition of the sonnets in 1966, that it was likely that the two had met on Herbert’s 17th birthday in April 1597. Dover Wilson thought the meeting might have been arranged by Herbert’s mother, the Countess of Pembroke, at Wilton House, the family home in Southern England. Dover Wilson went on to argue on that basis that “Sonnet 104” must have been written in 1600, three years later, on the occasion of Herbert’s 20th birthday.

Intriguing though Dover Wilson’s argument might be, a half-century later it has not much shifted the dial in terms of establishing a consensus on who the fair youth might have been. In spite of vast amounts of critical ink expended on the matter, the identity of this young man, if indeed he was a real person, remains a matter of speculation.