The four dedications place the works within a history of literary patronage: Venus and Adonis and Lucrece address Southampton in Shakespeare’s name; the Sonnets address “Mr. W.H.” through the publisher Thomas Thorpe; the First Folio names William and Philip Herbert through John Heminge and Henry Condell after the author’s death. William Herbert is the strongest candidate for “W.H.” For the Neville case, the significance is patronage: these earls stood above him in rank and could advance his career and his family’s interests. Neville was a knight and country gentleman; Southampton, Pembroke and Montgomery had the standing and access of great aristocratic patrons.
Southampton championed Neville’s bid for high office. The Sidney–Herbert connection stretched from his father’s friendship with Sir Henry Sidney, through his own travels with Robert Sidney, to Herbert patronage of his descendants.1
The first two dedications: Southampton
In 1593 the author of Venus and Adonis offered Southampton “the first heir of my invention” and promised “graver labor.” The following year’s Lucrece is usually read as the fulfilment of that promise. Its dedication begins:
The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; […]2
These are the only two dedications signed “William Shakespeare.” They place Southampton at the beginning of the author’s public literary identity.
Neville himself supplies the earliest connection. In his declaration of March 1601, he recalled Southampton’s earlier time in Lord Burghley’s house. Southampton remained a minor until October 1594, after both poems had been entered for publication. Neville’s remark establishes earlier acquaintance, without dating their last conversation or establishing their closeness in 1593–94.3
Southampton was chosen to approach Neville about the proposed seizure of Elizabeth’s court. Both men were later imprisoned following Essex’s failed rising in February 1601 and released in April 1603. Southampton subsequently championed Neville’s bid for the secretaryship; their opponent Northampton reportedly described Neville as Southampton’s “dear Damon,” invoking the classical example of devoted friendship.4
The third dedication: “Mr. W.H.” and William Herbert
The 1609 Sonnets offer a different problem. Thomas Thorpe wishes happiness and the immortality promised by the poet to “Mr. W.H.,” the “onlie begetter” of the ensuing sonnets. William Herbert supplies those initials in their natural order. More importantly, he appears repeatedly in the patronage history of Thorpe’s other books.5
Three titles make the case concrete:
- 1609: The Discovery of a New World. John Healey’s translation of Joseph Hall’s Mundus alter et idem was entered by Thorpe and printed by George Eld, the printer of the Sonnets. Healey dedicated it to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.
- 1610: Augustine’s City of God. Eld printed Healey’s translation with a dedication to Pembroke signed by Thorpe. It recalls the patron’s earlier protection and explicitly brings Virginia into the account of the translator’s movements.
- 1610 and 1616: Epictetus. Thorpe’s address in the 1610 edition was to John Florio. It credited Florio with obtaining protection for Healey’s earlier work and sought the same patron’s help again. In the 1616 edition, Thorpe addressed his dedication directly to Pembroke and explained Healey’s wish that the translations should be offered to him.6
The 1616 edition was printed for Edward Blount, who seven years later co-published the First Folio.7
Mark Vessey’s study of the English Augustine draws these books together. He explains Pembroke’s suitability by “his previous favors to Thorpe and Healey and his prominence in the Virginia Company.” Vessey also directs readers to Katherine Duncan-Jones’s substantial case for identifying the Sonnets’ “W.H.” with Herbert.8
Virginia sharpens the context. Thorpe registered the Sonnets on 20 May 1609. Three days later the Second Virginia Charter named Pembroke, Southampton and Neville to the company’s resident council in England. Duncan-Jones, as discussed by Vessey, reads Thorpe’s “well-wishing adventurer in setting forth” against this moment of colonial enterprise. In her reading, Thorpe risks an investment in publishing while Herbert supports expeditions to the New World.9
Herbert is the strongest identification: the initials fit, and this publishing sequence repeatedly seeks his protection. Healey dedicated the 1609 Discovery to him; Thorpe himself signed the Pembroke dedications of 1610 and 1616. Calling an earl “Mr.” remains an objection, and the identification is disputed. But the case rests on a sequence of actual dedications, not initials alone. Nor does identifying the dedicatee settle who inspired every sonnet or what Thorpe meant by “begetter.”10
The fourth dedication: from Sidney friendship to Herbert patronage
In 1623 there is no riddle about the names. The First Folio addresses William, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery. Heminge and Condell explain that the brothers had favoured the plays and their author while he was alive:
and have prosecuted both them, and their Author living,
with so much favour11
Here “prosecuted … with favour” means supported: the brothers’ patronage is presented as an existing relationship, continued in the collected edition.
For Neville, this was a family connection already more than a generation old. Sir Henry Sidney, the Herbert brothers’ maternal grandfather, was an intimate friend of Neville’s father. Writing to his son Robert on 28 October 1580, Sidney declared:
There can be no greater love than of long time hath been, and yet is, between Sir Harry Neville and me, and so will continue till our lives end. Love you those we have done, and do.12
The younger men carried that friendship forward. Neville travelled with Robert Sidney, the future Folio dedicatees’ uncle. Robert’s brother Philip urged him to remain with Savile and undertake exercises with Neville: there was “great expectation of you both.” Their sister Mary Sidney Herbert was William and Philip Herbert’s mother. Neville’s European education placed him within the family from which the Folio’s patrons emerged.
In 1612–13 Neville brokered a reconciliation between Pembroke and the king’s favourite Rochester, offering to deliver Winwood’s letter to the earl “with mine own hands.” After Overbury’s imprisonment in April 1613, Pembroke and Neville counselled Rochester together. Neville supplied mediation and counsel.13
Herbert involvement with Neville’s family continued after his death and across the Folio years. In November 1621 a Sir Henry Neville, probably the ambassador’s eldest son, was elected MP for Wilton, probably through Pembroke’s influence. In December 1628 Philip, as Lord Chamberlain, appointed the son a gentleman of the privy chamber in extraordinary.14 After the son’s death in June 1629, William received the benefit of the wardship of his under-age heir Richard—a legal and financial stake, not by itself an act of generosity.15
William’s secretary John Thorowgood married the son’s widow, Elizabeth Smythe, and acquired Richard’s wardship. He became stepfather to Richard and his younger brother Henry, the future author of The Isle of Pines, to whom he left his French and Italian books.16
The brothers who received Shakespeare’s collected plays belonged to a family bound to Neville’s across generations.
The poets who introduce the Folio
The Folio’s verses are part of the same evidence. They establish literary authority, mourn the author and promise his survival in print. Their writers connect this aristocratic patronage to Neville’s literary friendships, kinship and the publishers who brought the works into print.
Ben Jonson supplies the portrait verses and the great memorial poem. His own Epigrams, dedicated to William Herbert, contain an eighteen-line address to Neville beginning “Who now calls on thee, Nevil, is a Muse.” Chapter 46 compares its opening with his addresses to Donne and Beaumont and with Sonnet 38. The collection unites the Folio’s leading poet, its chief dedicatee and Neville in one printed volume.17
Hugh Holland, author of the Folio sonnet “Upon the Lines and Life,” appears with Donne and a Sir Henry Neville in the Convivium Philosophicum associated with the Mitre Tavern. Zachary Lesser identifies that Neville as Neville of Billingbear.18
Leonard Digges was Neville’s second cousin once removed; his brother Dudley’s dealings with Neville are documented in the Overbury investigation. Dudley’s Foure Paradoxes also supplies a proposed source for Coriolanus (Chapter 34): one brother connects to the play’s sources, the other to its Folio tribute. Leonard’s Gerardo (1622), published by Blount, was dedicated to the same Herbert brothers who received the Folio the next year.19
“I.M.”, generally identified as James Mabbe, is connected through Blount’s publication of his The Rogue (1622–23), with commendatory verses by Jonson and Digges; no direct Mabbe–Neville contact has been established.20
The dedications connect the works with patrons whose support for Neville and his family is documented across generations.
Notes and sources
The evidence brought together here is presented in Chapter 2 (Sidney family friendship and travel), 39 (Southampton), 49 (Pembroke and Neville) and 53 (the Herbert brothers and Neville’s descendants). “Patronage” describes support for careers, offices and family interests; it does not imply a surviving record of payment for Shakespeare’s writing.↩︎
William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593), dedication, sig. A2r, first-edition record; Lucrece (1594), dedication, sig. A2r, first-edition record. The quoted opening of Lucrece follows the Folger edition. “First” here concerns the works initially published under Shakespeare’s name, not a claim that no play had yet been written. Chapter 39 prints the complete dedications.↩︎
Chapter 39 reproduces Neville’s declaration of 2 March 1601 and examines Southampton’s minority alongside the publication dates of the two poems. The declaration establishes earlier acquaintance, not the date of a literary transaction.↩︎
Chapter 6 recounts Southampton’s approach and the Drury House meeting. Chapter 39 supplies the release order, the secretaryship correspondence and the source for Northampton’s “dear Damon.” It also quotes Drury’s letter to Neville of 6 May 1600: the Southampton letter among Neville’s papers was addressed to Drury, not Neville.↩︎
Shake-speares Sonnets (London: George Eld for Thomas Thorpe, 1609), dedication, first-edition record and image. The signature is “T. T.” The claim for Herbert concerns the dedicatee of the published volume; it does not equate every addressee within the sequence with him.↩︎
Mark Vessey, “The Citie of God (1610) and the London Virginia Company,” Augustinian Studies 30.2 (1999): 257–281, pp. 265–267 and notes 26–36. Joseph Hall, The Discovery of a New World, translated by John Healey (1609), STC 12686, dedication signed “I. H.”; Augustine, Of the Citie of God, translated by Healey (1610), dedication signed “Th. Th.,” TCP A22641; Epictetus, His Manuall. And Cebes His Table (1610), address to Florio signed “TH. TH.,” TCP A00303. Vessey identifies Pembroke as the patron sought through Florio. The 1610 Epictetus issue represented by A00303 names Edward Blount and William Barrett on its title page; Thorpe’s signed address must be distinguished from the imprint.↩︎
Epictetus Manuall. Cebes Table. Theophrastus Characters, translated by John Healey (London: George Purslowe for Edward Blount, 1616), STC 10426, ESTC S101637, Folger catalogue. Vessey, p. 267 and n. 33, supplies the account of Thorpe’s dedication and Healey’s intention. The change of dedication is not a claim that Florio ceased to be involved, or that Thorpe and Eld produced the 1616 edition under the same imprint as in 1610.↩︎
Vessey, “The Citie of God,” p. 280 (quotation); pp. 265–266 n. 26, discussing Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed., Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Arden Shakespeare (1997), pp. 53–69. Duncan-Jones’s argument is cited here through Vessey. Vessey’s study concerns the translation’s religious and colonial setting; it does not advance Neville’s authorship. Its suggested chronology of Healey’s voyage is not needed for this patronage argument.↩︎
Sonnets entry, Stationers’ Register, 20 May 1609, Liber C, fol. 183v, Shakespeare Documented; Second Charter of Virginia, 23 May 1609, resident council clause. Philip Herbert appears in the wider company list, not this council clause. For Duncan-Jones’s interpretation see Vessey, pp. 265–266 n. 26. The extension to Neville follows the charter, not a claim made by Duncan-Jones. The publisher is the grammatical “adventurer”; the colonial resonance is an interpretation of his wording, not proof of Thorpe’s individual subscription.↩︎
The identity of “W.H.” remains disputed. The preference for Herbert argued here follows the publication evidence discussed by Vessey, pp. 265–267; it is not a claim of scholarly consensus. Thorpe uses Pembroke’s title in his signed dedications of 1610 and 1616, making “Mr.” a real difficulty for the identification.↩︎
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (1623), dedication, sig. A2r–v; address to readers; Jonson and Digges poems. Boston Public Library copy, facsimile. Dedication quotation preserves the printed line break, with spelling modernized. Heminge and Condell sign the address; the attribution of its composition is a separate question. The poems do not name Neville as Shakespeare.↩︎
Chapter 2 reproduces Sir Henry Sidney’s letter to Robert of 28 October 1580 and Philip Sidney’s letter to Robert of 18 October 1580, with the documentary references, and identifies Mary Sidney Herbert as the brothers’ mother. The quotation concerns the ambassador’s father, the elder Sir Henry Neville. Robert and Philip Sidney were the Herbert brothers’ maternal uncles.↩︎
By 1605 Pembroke was writing on behalf of Neville’s secretary John Packer. Chapter 49 documents Pembroke’s support for Packer in February 1604/5 and prints the relevant Naunton, Neville and Packer letters. Neville’s undated letter is provisionally placed in April 1613, although the Historical Manuscripts Commission’s introduction suggests it concerns the November 1612 reconciliation. Packer’s report is dated 22 April 1613. The two reconciliation accounts need not describe separate events.↩︎
Chapter 53 documents the November 1621 Wilton return and the December 1628 court appointment, following Andrew Thrush’s History of Parliament biography of Sir Henry Neville III (1588–1629). Thrush treats the identification of the 1621 Wilton member as probably the ambassador’s son, not certain; the later appointment is securely assigned to him.↩︎
Chapter 53 reproduces the calendar entry for the Crown’s grant to William Herbert on 3 November 1629 of the benefit of Richard Neville’s wardship. Richard was the ambassador’s grandson, not his son. The grant alone does not establish upbringing in Pembroke’s household; Thorowgood’s subsequent acquisition of the wardship is a separate event.↩︎
Chapter 53 documents Thorowgood’s service to Pembroke, marriage to Elizabeth Smythe Neville, acquisition of Richard’s wardship and bequest of French and Italian books to his stepson Henry in 1657. Richard, the ward, and Henry, the writer, were different grandsons of the ambassador. The precise terms by which the wardship passed to Thorowgood have not been established here.↩︎
Chapter 46 prints Jonson’s complete epigram “To Sir Henry Nevil” (Epigrams, CIX) and compares it with his addresses to Donne and Beaumont and with Sonnet 38. The collection’s dedication names William Herbert. The verbal comparison is interpretive; the named addressee and dedicatee are printed facts.↩︎
Chapter 45 reproduces the manuscript list and poem and gives Zachary Lesser’s identification of Neville of Billingbear, together with the scholarly disagreement over which Sir Henry Neville is intended. The identification used here follows Lesser. The gathering is not evidence of Folio planning.↩︎
Chapter 49 sets out the Digges pedigree, Dudley’s examination of 6 November 1615, and Leonard’s dedication of Gerardo (1622) to the Herbert brothers. Leonard, not Dudley, wrote the Folio tribute. For Dudley’s contribution, see Thomas and Dudley Digges, Foure Paradoxes (1604), fourth paradox, p. 104, TCP A20463; Andrew Hadfield, “Shakespeare and the Digges Brothers,” Reformation 25.1 (2020), 2–17, especially 13–17, DOI. The source relationship is a scholarly proposal; Dudley’s discussion of Coriolanus is explicit. The chapter also documents their stepfather Thomas Russell’s links with the Neville family and Shakespeare’s will.↩︎
Arthur W. Secord, “I.M. of the First Folio Shakespeare and Other Mabbe Problems,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 47 (1948): 374–381, especially pp. 374–377, article scan. Secord distinguishes the attribution from a named signature and grounds it in publishing associations as well as verbal parallels. On p. 375 n. 3 he records first-edition copies of The Rogue with the two parts dated 1622–22, 1622–23 and 1623–23. The Folio itself prints only “I. M.”↩︎