trikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: "Thou single wilt prove none."

But is it not a little strange that the pen that drew Rosalind and
Juliet should have gone no farther, when by a touch he could have
filled it with suggestions of the fair, the stately and the titled maidens
who were in the court life of that day, and whose names and faces and
reputed characters must have been known to the poet, whatever his place or
station in London? How would a tracing of a mother, nobly born, or of a
lordly but deceased father, of some old castle, of some fair eminence, of
some grand forest, or of ancestral oaks shading fair waters, have lightened
the picture! And could the poet who gave us the magnificent pictures of
English kings and queens, princes and lords--could that poet, writing to
and of one of the fairest of the courtly circle of the reign of Elizabeth,
so withhold his pen that it gives no hint that his friend was in or of
that circle, or any suggestion of his most happy and fortunate
surroundings? Surely, in painting so fully the beauties of his friend,
the poet would have allowed to appear some hint of the beauty of light
and color in which he moved.

I have before me in the book of Mr. Lee, a copy of the picture of the
Earl of Southampton painted in Welbeck Abbey. The dress is of the
court; and the sword, the armor, the plume and rich drapery all
indicate a member of the nobility. Could our great poet in so many
lines of extreme compliment and adulation have always omitted any
reference to the insignia of rank which were almost a part of the
young Earl; and would he always have escaped all reference to coronet
or sword, to lands or halls, or to any of the employments or sports,
privileges or honors, then much more than now, distinctive of a peer
of the realm?

And all that is here said equally repels the inference that these
Sonnets were addressed to any person connected with the nobility. The
claim that they were addressed to Lord Pembroke [William Herbert] I
think is exploded, if it ever had substance.[36] Lord Pembroke did not
come to London until 1598 and was then but eighteen years old. There
is not a particle of evidence that he and Shakespeare had any
relations or intimacy whatever.

While I regard the view that the Sonnets were addresse