by Geoff Puterbaugh



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I




Dusk was approaching as the still-youthful assistant professor rang the doorbell at the home of Wilson Tibbet.
Wilson Tibbet was a renowned and somewhat feared figure on the quiet campus of St. Edward's College.  He was known to be reclusive, and deeply immersed in his research.
The previous evening, our still-youthful assistant professor had delivered his first public lecture at St. Edward's.  Jason Goode's maiden lecture had the title: The Neverending Mystery of Shakespeare's "Mr. W.H.:" Some Thoughts on Transgressive Sexuality in Elizabethan England.  An hour after finishing the lecture, he had received a polite invitation to early-evening tea at the home of Professor Tibbet.
So he had, hesitantly, come and rung the doorbell.
Wilson Tibbet threw the door open promptly.  He was a massive, gruff bear of a man, with a bushy but well-trimmed brown beard.  He threw out his huge hand and Jason Goode shook it.
"Come on in!  I'll put the water on the boil!"
Jason stepped into the piney living-room as Tibbet waved him to a chair.  "Have a seat!" Tibbet went into the kitchen and put a teakettle on the burner.  "I hope you've had a pleasant Saturday."
"Oh, very nice, sir.  And I hope you've had the same."
"Yes.  I spent almost three hours in the garden."  Tibbet came out of the kitchen and sat down in the chair opposite Jason.  "In fact, I am rather cherishing the hope that the early evening will be just as pleasant as the day.  I fully intend to engage you in a discussion of your lecture last night, and what we mortals may make of Shakespeare's sonnets."
Jason felt himself blushing.  "Well, that lecture was rather quickly written.  The English department felt that my time had come, and I was a bit under the gun."
"Do you feel that your lecture was designed more to entertain, or to inform, or both?"  The question was asked lightly, but it was serious.  Jason found it hard to answer.
"Well, it is, in fact, terribly difficult to say anything new about the sonnets.  They were a mystery when they were first published, and they are a mystery today.  My own feeling is that they will always be a mystery."
The kettle shrieked from the kitchen.  Tibbet jumped up and went to turn it off.  "Do you have a preference for Assam or Ceylon or Yunnan?"
"No, they're all tea to me."
Tibbet snorted.  "Ah, young people!  Since you have no preference, I'm going to brew us some Yunnan Fancy."  A few moments later, he was back in his seat.  He scratched his beard, and asked, "What sources did you consult for your lecture?"
Jason felt himself blushing again, because the lecture had really been something of a rush job - and, although he would never confess this to anyone - something of a snow job as well.
"Well, I suppose I consulted the standard sources: the sonnets themselves, of course, as well as Oscar Wilde's famous essay, and W.H. Auden's Preface to the sonnets.  I think they pretty well summarize the state of our ignorance."
Tibbet's face grew keen and curious.  "Does that mean that you really take the idea of Willie Hughes seriously?"
Jason shook his head. "No, not really.  There's no evidence at all that any such person existed.  But, all in all, it seems that the sonnets were written to a handsome young man very much like Willie Hughes."
"And so I take it that you believe the sonnets were addressed to one 'Mr. W. H.," and dedicated to him as well?"
"Well, of course.  That's one of our few definite bits of knowledge about the sonnets.  It's not much, and the identity of this 'Mr. W. H.' is a complete mystery, but the dedication is right there in plain English."
A timer went off in the kitchen, and Wilson Tibbet excused himself to fetch the tea.  When he had placed the two steaming cups on the table, along with a sugar bowl, he paused to think again.
"Well, I suppose we had better begin there."  Another pause.  "Have you read quite a bit of Shakespeare?"
"No, not really.  The usual amount.  My specialty is Byron."
"Then let me show you two bits of evidence.  One is Shakespeare's dedication for Venus and Adonis, and the other is his dedication for The Rape of Lucrece."  Tibbet reached for a book on the coffee table and flipped through the pages.  "Here you are."
Jason looked at the dedication: he had never seen it before.



To the Right Honorable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield.

Right Honorable,
I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden; only, if your Honor seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honored you with some graver labor.  But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it would yield me still so bad a harvest.  I leave it to your honorable survey, and your Honor to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation.
Your Honor's in all duty,
William Shakespeare

"The only apparent difficulty here is the word ear, which means 'plow, or till.'"  Tibbet glanced at Jason for confirmation, and Jason nodded.  "I would point out two things: the dedication is to a patron, as were all Elizabethan dedications, and it is very definitely signed by the author, one William Shakespeare."
Jason nodded.  "Yes, surely."
Tibbet flipped through the book.  "Now here, for comparison, is the dedication for The Rape of Lucrece."



To the Right Honorable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield.

The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety.  The warrant I have of your honorable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance.  What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours.  Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happiness.

Your Lordship's in all duty,
William Shakespeare

Tibbet glanced at Jason again.  "Very similar, isn't it?" 
Jason nodded, and replied, "But the language here is more confident, it seems to me.  The first dedication is full of doubt and hesitation, while this one seems absolutely confident of being accepted."
"From which we may just possibly conclude that, by the time of the second dedication, the grand Earl of Southampton had indeed become Shakespeare's patron."
Jason paused.  "We could certainly jot it down as a distinct possibility."
Tibbet smiled.  "And this one is also plainly signed by the man who wrote it, some guy named William Shakespeare."
Jason nodded.
"O.K., then, let's take a look at that 'plain English' dedication for the sonnets."  Jason was suddenly interested.  Tibbet flipped the pages, and showed Jason the following.


TO THE ONLY BEGETTER OF
THESE ENSUING SONNETS
MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESS
AND THAT ETERNITY
PROMISED
BY
OUR EVER-LIVING POET
WISHETH
THE WELL-WISHING
ADVENTURER IN
SETTING
FORTH

T. T.

Jason gave a low whistle.  "This is quite definitely not like the other dedications.  For one thing, the guy left his CapsLock key engaged."
Tibbet smiled.  "Well, of course it's different.  This dedication was not written by Shakespeare.  One thing that leaps to the eye is that it is not signed by William Shakespeare.  It is signed by…."
Tibbet paused.
Jason squinted at the page.  "T.T.?  Who the hell is this T.T. guy?"
Tibbet smiled.  "T.T. is Thomas Thorpe, the publisher.  He wrote this dedication, and he signed it.  And when he wrote 'our ever-living poet,' he was of course referring to this man called William Shakespeare."
Jason frowned.  "So who was Mr. W.H.?"
"In one sense, who cares?  He's the publisher's man.  He's most certainly not Shakespeare's man.  But in fact, we know who this Mr. W.H. was.  Note: that is read as Master W. H., not Mister W.H.  Thorpe is referring to a knight, Sir William Harvey, who is the man who got the manuscript of the sonnets for the publisher."  Tibbet coughed, and took a sip of tea.  "Fourteen years after they were written, by the way.  Without the knowledge or permission of that man called William Shakespeare.  In fact, it appears that this publishing venture was not a great success; the first publication of the sonnets seems to have been suppressed."
Tibbet paused.  "This whole business of 'Mr. W. H.' has been one of the biggest red herrings in the history of world literature."  He paused, and took another swallow from his tea.  "There!  We've accomplished one feat of literary detective work already this evening.  Come out and take a look at my roses before the sun goes down."

The two men walked out to Tibbet's garden as the sun slowly sank in the west.
"Who was this mysterious knight, then, and how did he get hold of the sonnets?" Jason asked as they strolled towards the roses.
"Well, if we continue along with our previous guess, that the Earl of Southampton was Shakespeare's patron, and that the sonnets were addressed to Southampton…."
"But Southampton was an Earl!  The sonnets were addressed to a beautiful young man!" Jason objected.
Tibbet smiled. "Well, Southampton was a very good-looking 19-year-old boy when Shakespeare began writing the sonnets.  We'll have a look at his picture when we get back inside."  They paused to admire Tibbet's roses, yellow and red and pink and white in the light of the setting sun.  "Now, the sonnets seem to have been written over a period of, say, three years, from 1592 through 1594, 1595.  Presumably Southampton collected them all in some drawer in his desk, and when they came to an end he might have shut them up in some letter-case.  Who knows?"  He paused.
"But then time went by.  Southampton's step-father died.  Southampton and Shakespeare moved on to other things.  Shakespeare, of course, was involved in his new theater company." Tibbet paused again.  "More time passed.  Southampton's mother married again, for the third time, to our 'mysterious knight,' Sir William Harvey.  The years went by, and Southampton's mother died, in 1607 - a full dozen years after the last sonnet was written and filed away.  She left the contents of the house, all the furniture and things, to her husband: Sir William Harvey.  He re-married the next year, in 1608.  And in 1609, he apparently found the sonnets and took them to the publisher, Thomas Thorpe."
The sun was setting in a glorious blaze of color.  Jason watched happily.  "It's a lovely sunset tonight."
"Indeed it is.  Indeed it is."
Jason was lost in thought.  "Why didn't Shakespeare publish the sonnets, way back in 1595?"
"You're joking!"
Jason blushed.  "No, that was a serious question."
"Well, the sonnets were not meant for public consumption.  At the very least, three or four of them are smutty.  But the story they tell is deeply embarrassing to the Earl of Southampton and to Shakespeare as well.  After all, in the sonnets it is clear that Southampton is having a sexual affair with Shakespeare's mistress, the Dark Lady.  Elizabethans who cared about their reputations would never have published such stuff!"
Jason thought about it.  "But Thomas Thorpe did."
"Indeed he did!  And - this is just my theory - within a few weeks Thomas Thorpe had two surprise visitors:  William Shakespeare and an agent of the Earl of Southampton.  Remember: fourteen years had passed.  Shakespeare was now the most famous and celebrated poet of the country, and Southampton was an extremely powerful and respected nobleman at the royal court.  I believe that Shakespeare would have pointed out that permission to publish had not been granted, and that Southampton's agent would have bought up all the remaining copies.  And they left Thorpe's office after obtaining a clear understanding that there would be no further publication of the sonnets.  To enforce that understanding, they took away the original manuscript provided by Sir William Harvey.  And they may well have destroyed it, along with all the remaining copies which they had purchased."
Jason whistled softly.  "Heavy pressure was applied, then."
"The sonnets certainly disappeared.  There was a mangled edition of them around 1640, where some fool named John Benson rearranged things and changed male pronouns to female pronouns, but the sonnets as originally written stayed out of sight for another century - until 1780, as a matter of fact, when Malone's edition of the original sonnets appeared.  This is one of the real mysteries of the sonnets - magnificent poetry by England's greatest poet - utterly forgotten for nearly two hundred years.
"It is also quite sobering to think that Southampton could have destroyed the manuscript before it reached the publisher.  Then, alas, you and I would not be having this delightful conversation, for Shakespeare's sonnets would have perished, utterly, from the earth."
The sun was down, and the two men turned back towards the house.

Back in the piney living-room, Tibbet flicked on the lights and took a manila folder from his desk before settling into his easy chair once more.
"I'll get to the portrait in a moment, but I would like to introduce it by way of Oscar Wilde."  He reached for the coffee table and picked up a copy of The Portrait of Mr. W. H.  "As we can see from the title, Oscar got hold of the wrong end of the stick completely with regard to the 'Mr. W. H.' business."  Tibbet smiled wanly.  "I must warn you that this entire essay may be pleasant reading for lovers of fiction, but Oscar Wilde was a poet and a playwright.  He was not a historian and he was not a literary scholar.  For example, in order to defend his silly tale of 'Willie Hughes,' he has to go through the other candidates for the Fair Lord of the sonnets and disqualify them.  Here is how he deals with Southampton:

Southampton became at a very early age the lover of Elizabeth Vernon, so he needed no entreaties to marry; he was not beautiful; he did not resemble his mother, as Mr. W. H. did…

"Wrong, wrong, and wrong again, Oscar!"  Tibbet smiled. "But let's deal with the charges one by one."
Tibbet removed a color print from the manila folder and handed it to Jason.  "Point One: He was not beautiful."
Tibbet looked at Jason with curiosity.  "What do you think?"
Jason paused and gathered his wits.  "Well, it's always hard to tell from pictures, but he was most surely not homely!  In fact, I suspect that if he were to walk out of this portrait, living and breathing, he might be captivating, even ravishing."
Tibbet smiled.  "You have good instincts.  Southampton was famous throughout England for his good looks, which were said to turn the heads of men and women alike."
He paused.  "The second point, about marriage.  This boy here was nineteen years old and the last of his line - his father was long dead.  He had promised his guardian to marry when he turned eighteen, but when he actually turned eighteen he balked, and demanded more time.  At the time he met Shakespeare, he had the good looks you can see, and absolutely no intention of getting married.  He didn't meet this Elizabeth Vernon until the last sonnet was written and filed away, and even after beginning his affair with her, he refused to get married until she became pregnant and marriage became unavoidable.  Therefore, at the time the first sonnets were written, the need for grandchildren was a mighty concern for his mother the Countess.  In fact, I think of the first 15-16 sonnets, which are all encouragements to get married - well, I think of them as the 'Mother Sonnets.'"  Tibbet laughed.  "It's even possible that the Countess called in Master Shakespeare and spelled out what she wanted him to write about."
Jason laughed. "And, the third point - did he look like his mother?"
"Of course he did!  I didn't bring the portrait, but it's available in his biography.  I don't think that anyone who compared her portrait with this one would deny that they are portraits of mother and son."
Jason paused, and frowned.  "So what was Oscar Wilde up to?  He knew some history!  He must have seen portraits of Southampton! Why would he lie, so carelessly?"
Tibbet replied, "I don't know.  I suspect the storyteller in him realized that Southampton had to be disqualified, or else his 'Willie Hughes' fantasy would simply not fly.  And if the truth would not disqualify him, well, then, to hell with the truth!"  Tibbet looked at Jason Goode for a moment.
Jason thought for a moment.  "I can understand that attitude when constructing a work of fiction, perhaps, but never in a work of history."
"Amen to that."  Tibbet paused.  "A few more details about this man Southampton before we proceed.  First, his name.  The Elizabethans pronounced 'Henry' as 'Harry' - the 'n' was silent.  And his last name, Wriothesley, was pronounced 'Risley.'  Therefore, 'Henry Wriothesley' was pronounced 'Harry Risley.'"
Jason smiled.  "I had been wondering about that name."
Tibbet smiled.  "In my informal moments, I think of him as just plain 'Hal,' and of the sonnets as 'The Adventures of Will and Hal.'"  He paused, and opened the manila folder again.
"However, history is full of surprises.  I should tell you that there have always been rumors that Hal was bisexual.  But in 2002, a very interesting discovery was made: a portrait that had been handed down in an English family for 300 years was discovered to be the first portrait of Hal ever done, perhaps when he was seventeen."  Tibbet handed another color print across to Jason.
Jason gave a low whistle.  "This is Hal??!!  He's in drag!"
"Well, he appears to be wearing lipstick, and rouge - and that's surely an enormous earring.  I should tell you that the family which has had this picture for the last 300 years always thought it was the portrait of some obscure lady."
"So Hal was… a raving queen?"
"I don't think so, but I don't know.  After this portrait, he seems to have changed his ways and his appearance, perhaps after some stern warnings about sodomy and the lash.  In the first picture we looked at, he's quite handsome and definitely male.  But I would not be a bit surprised to learn that he attended some private parties dressed as a lady, and I think that this second portrait definitely confirms those rumors of his bisexuality."
Jason shook his head, wondering.  "Good-bye, Mr. W. H., indeed, and hello, Hal!  But what was up with him and Shakespeare?"
Tibbet smiled. "Well, that is the question.  I don't think anybody knows.  What I can do is to give you the known facts."
"First," Tibbet held up a finger.  "Forget the 'Shakespeare was gay' idea.  He knocked up his girl-friend when he was 18, had to get married, and had saddled himself with three kids by the age of 21.  In the sonnets, he is clearly obsessed with The Dark Lady, and all of his overtly sexual poems are about her.  Shakespeare was a very-strongly-sexed heterosexual - the only thing we can be wondering about is whether he had his bisexual side, although it seems to have been a whole lot weaker than Hal's - if it existed at all."
Tibbet paused.  "But, right now, the sun is down.  I suspect I have given you a great deal of food for thought.  So I'll ask: are you free next week at this time?"
Jason Goode considered the question, and then nodded.  "Yes, quite free."
"Then I suggest we meet again, in a week's time.  Would that be agreeable to you?"
"Very much so."
So the two scholars parted, with Tibbet feeling a great relief that the younger man seemed to be genuinely interested in literature and scholarship, despite his capitulation to the merely trendy in using the word "transgressive."  In Tibbet's universe, the word "transgress" referred to law-breaking, and Tibbet was far too old and wise to think that law-breaking was an idea whose time had come.















II



On the next Saturday, Tibbet brewed up some fine Assam tea and resumed the discussion.
"You've probably realized by now that a lot of the information I've been giving to you is not the result of my own original research.  A bit of it is, but the man who put me on the right course was A. L. Rowse."
Jason nodded.  "I talked with some people in the Department.  Most had never heard of him, but those who had seemed to think he was some sort of vampire, or lunatic - or else a mere historian who was way out of his specialty."
Tibbet sighed.  "Well, they will talk like that.  And yet they never seem to address the fact that this sort of slipshod posturing is a leading symptom of the decadence of our departments of literature - and that is now a fact which is beyond dispute.  The humanities have become citadels for political activists who contribute nothing to their subject.  The fact that they sneer at a man like Rowse actually works out to his credit, I think.  Let's look for a moment.
"To my mind, nailing the dates of the sonnets was his first major accomplishment, as well as identifying the fair youth with certainty.  As you have discovered, many of the literati treat him as some sort of eccentric humbug, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Fools are not elected to All Souls College in Oxford - do you know about that college, Jason?"
Jason shook his head.
"It's a college with no students.  The fellows of All Souls have in fact been elected to a lifetime of research.  Rowse spent twenty-five years becoming a leading historian of the Elizabethan era, and another twenty-five years researching Shakespeare.  When a man of that stature identifies Southampton as the fair youth, and further states: 'Not only the dating, but all the circumstances and evidences, literary and historical, biographical and personal, cohere together with absolute internal and external consistency to make it impossible for this to be impugned' - well, it would be foolish to simply assume that he was wrong.  If you think he is wrong, you should at least be able to marshal some facts which contradict the 'absolute consistency' which Rowse claimed."  Tibbet paused.  "The only thing I've come across so far is one claim that Rowse misunderstood one word in the diaries of Simon Forman, which might possibly weaken his claim to have discovered the Dark Lady."
Tibbet paused and took a sip of his tea.  "But the identification of the Dark Lady is really the least interesting of Rowse's discoveries, and the rest of his work remains absolutely unshaken even if you remove that identification completely."
Jason nodded.  "Although it was interesting to read Emilia Lanier's poetry in that light."
Tibbet lifted his eyebrows.  "You have not been idle."
Jason shook his head.  "No.  I find this trail fascinating."
Tibbet smiled.  "So let's proceed to perhaps the most fascinating of all the discoveries: the identification of the Rival Poet as Christopher Marlowe.  Now, in my own case, the minute I read that startling idea, I realized that this was an extraordinarily interesting suggestion.  Metaphorically, I whacked my forehead and exclaimed, 'Great Heavens, that's obvious!  How could we have missed it?'"
Jason nodded his head.  "And Rowse's brilliant reading of Sonnet 86 really nails it.  How could everyone else have failed to notice that the sonnet is in the past tense - and that it is in the past tense because Marlowe died?"
"Yes, indeed!"  Tibbet's face was flushed with enthusiasm.  "How could we have missed this stuff?  Marlowe was killed in a quarrel over the bill in a tavern in Deptford in May of 1593 - and there went the Rival Poet, forever.  As Rowse points out, this may have been the most tragic loss ever known to English literature."
Jason nodded.  "And it's especially interesting that Marlowe, while he lived, was arguably a better writer than Shakespeare!"
Tibbet nodded. "And that he was actually winning the rivalry between Shakespeare and himself.  This is the critical turning point of the sonnets, the point where Shakespeare's heart is seriously wounded.  Before, Hal had betrayed Shakespeare with the Dark Lady, but to actually prefer another poet…that was deadly."
"And then you factor in the well-known fact that Marlowe was an enthusiastic homosexual…"  Jason went on.
"Yes!" Tibbet exclaimed.  "There you have a very interesting kettle of fish - and we all missed it!!  Not only that, there is something even more interesting which grows out of this one discovery."
"What?"
"Well, we now have the two greatest poets of the Elizabethan era rivaling for the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, which is a fascinating historical fact.  But more than that, we have the rival poems! While Shakespeare was writing Venus and Adonis, his rival Marlowe was writing Hero and Leander.  A true case of dueling poems.  They echo one another and refer to one another.  They both contain instantly recognizable portraits of Southampton - the beauteous, fair-haired youth, prone to fascination with himself.  You know, if I wanted to go get a Ph.D. in English, I'd probably write my thesis on the subject - except that someone has undoubtedly done it already."
Jason smiled.  "Well, I could always check."  Tibbet laughed and waved the idea away.  Jason went on, "And just to make everything completely ridiculous, the Norton Anthology of English Literature still states that the date of Hero and Leander is absolutely unknown!"
Tibbet laughed out loud.  "Truly a case of willed stupidity!"  He began coughing.  "Well, my boy, that's enough for me tonight!  May I invite you to join me in something a bit stronger than tea before you go home?"
Jason smiled, and wound up sampling Tibbet's single-malt Scotch until 10:30 PM.









III





On the third weekend, the tea was Ceylon Fancy, and Jason opened the discussion.
"And now we get to the question of sex.  I have my own ideas about this, but I'd like to know yours."
Tibbet smiled.  "Well, we are entering the realm of speculation here, but I think that I feel most comfortable with a very simple judgment of what Shakespeare felt: he was feeling a very strong love for a fascinating, charming young man - a love which had no sexual component, however.  In fact, I theorize that when Hal wanted to take things further than Shakespeare was prepared to do, that Shakespeare presented him with Sonnet 20 as a graceful, witty statement of what Shakespeare would not do.
"But the important thing is to realize that, like Achilles and Patroclus or David and Jonathan, this was a powerful emotion indeed, one which utterly surprised Shakespeare - and which apparently he never felt again."
Jason nodded.  "And what about Hal?"
Tibbet frowned.  "Well, I surmise that Hal did not like being rebuffed, even in such a witty and gracious way, because we human beings are built that way - nobody likes being rebuffed, especially handsome young noblemen.  And I think that this is the key which explains Hal deciding to have sex with Shakespeare's mistress: it was revenge for being rebuffed, and it was also strangely enjoyable - if I can put it this way - to be having sex with the very same woman Shakespeare had enjoyed - a rather odd way of getting close to having sex with Shakespeare himself."  Tibbet blushed.  "That's fairly embarrassing psychology, but I think that's the way the story went."
Jason looked at Tibbet.  "So you agree that Hal actually had no interest in the woman at all?"
"Oh, none whatsoever.  He dropped her like a hot potato after she had played her nasty little role."
Jason smiled.  "Well, strangely enough, it appears that we entirely agree about this whole subject."
Tibbet looked at Jason from a different angle, and mused, "Well, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
Jason stayed late for more Scotch that evening, but did not go home until the next morning.