re,
at a date when mentions of him in print were rare, was eulogised by name
as the author of 'Lucrece' in some prefatory verses to the volume. From
such considerations the theory of 'W. S.'s' identity with Willobie's
acquaintance acquires substance. If we assume that it was Shakespeare
who took a roguish delight in watching his friend Willobie suffer the
disdain of 'chaste Avisa' because he had 'newly recovered' from the
effects of a like experience, it is clear that the theft of Shakespeare's
mistress by another friend did not cause him deep or lasting distress.
The allusions that were presumably made to the episode by the author of
'Avisa' bring it, in fact, nearer the confines of comedy than of tragedy.

Summary of conclusions respecting the sonnets.

The processes of construction which are discernible in Shakespeare's
sonnets are thus seen to be identical with those that are discernible in
the rest of his literary work. They present one more proof of his
punctilious regard for the demands of public taste, and of his marvellous
genius and skill in adapting and transmuting for his own purposes the
labours of other workers in the field that for the moment engaged his
attention. Most of Shakespeare's sonnets were produced in 1594 under the
incitement of that freakish rage for sonnetteering which, taking its rise
in Italy and sweeping over France on its way to England, absorbed for
some half-dozen years in this country a greater volume of literary energy
than has been applied to sonnetteering within the same space of time here
or elsewhere before or since. The thousands of sonnets that were
circulated in England between 1591 and 1597 were of every literary
quality, from sublimity to inanity, and they illustrated in form and
topic every known phase of sonnetteering activity. Shakespeare's
collection, which was put together at haphazard and published
surreptitiously many years after the poems were written, was a medley, at
times reaching heights of literary excellence that none other scaled, but
as a whole reflecting the varied features of the sonnetteering vogue.
Apostrophes to metaphysical abstractions, vivid picturings of the
beauties of nature, adulation of a patron, idealisation of a _protege's_
regard for a nobleman in the figurative language of amorous passion,
amiable compliments on a woman's hair or touch on the virginals, and
vehement denunciation of the falseness and frailty of womankind--all
appea