espeare declares
that 'he cries Amen to every hymn that able spirit [_i.e._ his rival]
affords.' Very few poets of the day in England followed Ronsard's
practice of bestowing the title of hymn on miscellaneous poems, but
Barnes twice applies the word to his poems of love. {134a} When, too,
Shakespeare in Sonnet lxxx. employs nautical metaphors to indicate the
relations of himself and his rival with his patron--

My saucy bark inferior far to his . . .
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,

he seems to write with an eye on Barnes's identical choice of metaphor:

My fancy's ship tossed here and there by these [_sc._ sorrow's
floods]
Still floats in danger ranging to and fro.
How fears my thoughts' swift pinnace thine hard rock! {134b}

Other theories as to the rival's identity.

Gervase Markham is equally emphatic in his sonnet to Southampton on the
potent influence of his patron's 'eyes,' which, he says, crown 'the most
victorious pen'--a possible reference to Shakespeare. Nash's poetic
praises of the Earl are no less enthusiastic, and are of a finer literary
temper than Markham's. But Shakespeare's description of his rival's
literary work fits far less closely the verse of Markham and Nash than
the verse of their fellow aspirant Barnes.

Many critics argue that the numbing fear of his rival's genius and of its
influence on his patron to which Shakespeare confessed in the sonnets was
more likely to be evoked by the work of George Chapman than by that of
any other contemporary poet. But Chapman had produced no conspicuously
'great verse' till he began his translation of Homer in 1598; and
although he appended in 1610 to a complete edition of his translation a
sonnet to Southampton, it was couched in the coldest terms of formality,
and it was one of a series of sixteen sonnets each addressed to a
distinguished nobleman with whom the writer implies that he had no
previous relations. {135} Drayton, Ben Jonson, and Marston have also
been identified by various critics with 'the rival poet,' but none of
these shared Southampton's bounty, nor are the terms which Shakespeare
applies to his rival's verse specially applicable to the productions of
any of them.

Sonnets of friendship.

Many besides the 'dedicatory' sonnets are addressed to a handsome youth
of wealth and rank, for whom the poet avows 'love,' in the Elizabethan
sense of friendship. {136} Although no specific