The Four Dedications

The four dedications are keystones of any Shakespeare authorship theory: 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. The following sections bring those earlier chapters together. The dedications point back to the documented history of Neville’s ambitions, friendships and family fortunes.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 knowing Southampton as a child 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 joining in the Essex rebellion, and the two were imprisoned in the Tower after its failure and released together 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

Southampton’s support was patronage in action. The earl used his standing to promote a knight’s claim to one of the great offices of state. Their friendship had grown through shared imprisonment, but it operated across a difference in rank and influence. The recipient of Shakespeare’s two signed dedications was a man who actively sought Neville’s advancement.

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 publications 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” means pursued: 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 were already carrying that friendship forward. Neville travelled in Europe with Robert Sidney, the future Folio dedicatees’ uncle. Robert’s brother Philip, the poet, encouraged him to remain with Savile and undertake exercises with Neville, saying that there was “great expectation of you both.” Their sister Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, was William and Philip Herbert’s mother. Neville’s European education thus brought him into the immediate family from which the Folio’s patrons emerged. Sir Henry Sidney expressly urged Robert to continue his father’s attachment to the Neville family.

By 1605 Pembroke was writing on behalf of Neville’s secretary John Packer. In 1612–13 Neville brokered a reconciliation between Pembroke and the king’s favourite Rochester, urging Winwood to write to the earl and offering to deliver the letter “with mine own hands.” When Overbury was sent to the Tower in April 1613, Pembroke and Neville together counselled Rochester that evening and again the next morning. These were reciprocal political dealings across a difference in rank: Pembroke backed Neville’s secretary; Neville supplied mediation and counsel.¹³

The Herberts’ patronage of Neville’s family continued after his death and across the years of the Folio’s publication. In November 1621 a Sir Henry Neville, probably the ambassador’s eldest son, was returned for Wilton on Pembroke’s interest. In December 1628 Philip Herbert, as Lord Chamberlain, appointed the son a gentleman of the privy chamber in extraordinary. The court appointment is a clear act of advancement; the probable Wilton identification adds parliamentary patronage before the Folio.¹⁴

When the son died in June 1629, William Herbert received the benefit of the wardship of his under-age heir Richard, the ambassador’s grandson. The grant gave the earl a legal and financial stake in Richard’s minority; it does not by itself establish an act of generosity.¹⁵

The relationship reached into the household itself. John Thorowgood, who served as William Herbert’s secretary from about 1621 to 1630, married the younger Neville’s widow, Elizabeth Smythe, and acquired Richard’s wardship. He became stepfather to Richard and to Richard’s younger brother Henry, the future author of The Isle of Pines. In his will Thorowgood left that younger Henry his French and Italian books. Through Pembroke’s secretary, the patron’s household and Neville’s family became joined by marriage, wardship and a bequest of books.¹⁶

The sequence gives the Folio dedication particular force for the Neville case. A friendship between the fathers became companionship among the sons, political cooperation with William Herbert, and patronage for Neville’s descendants. The brothers who received Shakespeare’s collected plays belonged to a family bound to Neville’s across generations—and their involvement with his descendants continued after his death.

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 45 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. Kinship, publisher and dedicatees converge.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

Southampton, recipient of the author’s two signed dedications, championed Neville’s advancement. William Herbert is the strongest candidate for Thorpe’s “W.H.” and, with Philip, a named patron of the Folio. The brothers belonged to the Sidney family Neville had known since his youth; their later dealings extended to his son and grandson. On the Neville hypothesis, the dedications place the works under the protection of aristocrats whose influence mattered to their author and whose family connections outlasted him. The fit is between literary patronage and a documented life.