nt attachment to Mistress Elizabeth
Vernon, whom he married secretly, in spite of the queen's opposition, in
1598. Now, the earliest mention that we have of Shakespeare's poems is
when Meres speaks of "his sugared sonnets among his private friends."
This was in 1598, and, as Hallam and other critics have argued, is
probably a reference to earlier sonnets which have been lost, not to
those published in 1609. It was in 1598 that William Herbert, a
brilliant and fascinating young man, addicted to pleasure and
susceptible to flattery, but strongly disinclined to marriage, came up
to London to live, having visited the metropolis during the previous
year.

As for Lady Rich, besides the objections already urged on the score of
her personal appearance and her age, Shakespeare would never have dared
to speak of a reigning beauty of the court in the words of Sonnets 137,
144, 152. In fact, Mr. Massey's whole argument upon this head is based
upon his assertion that the poems are dramatic and not personal.

Mr. Massey's conviction that Marlowe is the rival poet of whose "great
verse" Shakespeare was jealous depends upon Southampton, and not
Herbert, being acknowledged to be the friend addressed, for Marlowe died
in 1593, when Herbert was but thirteen years old, and five years before
we have the first mention of Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets.
Certainly, a writer who had died five years before we find any mention
of the Sonnets can hardly be the living poet of whom Shakespeare
distinctly speaks in Sonnets 80 and 86. Also in Sonnet 82 he makes
mention of the "dedicated words" this rival addresses to his friend.
Now, we have no evidence that Marlowe ever dedicated anything to
Southampton, although Mr. Massey tries to bolster up a desperate case by
saying that "there is nothing improbable in supposing that Marlowe's
_Hero and Leander_ was intended to be dedicated to Southampton" had the
poet lived to finish it!

A stronger chain of evidence (still conjectural, it must be remembered)
points to Ben Jonson as this rival poet. His _Epigrams_, which contain a
eulogy upon Pembroke, and his _Catiline_, were both dedicated to this
earl, although neither of them was published till after the Sonnets. We
find the earl of Pembroke's name among the actors in Ben Jonson's
masques, and Falkland's eclogue testifies to their intimacy. And in the
80th Sonnet, Shakespeare uses the same comparison of himself and his
rival, to two ships of different