The Procreation Sonnets

The Procreation Sonnets 1 – 17

LISTEN TO THE SONNETCAST SPECIAL
ON THE PROCREATION SONNETS

The Procreation Sonnets are something of a conundrum: they are entirely clear in their intention, in their message, and in their poetic purpose, and yet they seem to fit nowhere properly. I say 'seem', because many things are not entirely as they seem, when it comes to William Shakespeare's Sonnets.

And so more than anything else, and more than many if not most of the other sonnets that we have of William Shakespeare’s, they raise the question: why? Why does William Shakespeare at some point in his life take time out of what cannot have been anything other than a busy schedule to tell a young man to produce an heir? What concern is the young man of his?

That he is doing this, that he is writing these sonnets specifically to tell a young man to get on with it, get married, produce an heir, is beyond doubt: this is just absolutely clear and we can all agree on this, but why? And, of course, who is this young man?

And, incidentally, the assumption that William Shakespeare's schedule is, by the time he writes these sonnets, busy is one we can consider reasonably justified going by the sheer volume of his output during the, by our standards comparatively short, thirty-odd years of his adult life.

There is virtually no question as to what these first 17 sonnets in the traditionally accepted and originally published sequence are about: they, without doubt and with hardly any exception exhort a young man to get married and have children.

The only semi-valid exceptions are Sonnets 5 – which simply doesn’t stand alone but sets up the argument to be concluded in Sonnet 6 – and Sonnet 15, which also does not on its own make an argument for procreation, but appears to offer an alternative way for the young recipient to perpetuate his memory beyond death, namely the poetry of Shakespeare himself. But unlike the astonishingly famous Sonnet 18 and its immediate successor, Sonnet 19, which both absolutely postulate that the poetry itself will make the young man live forever, Sonnet 15 in fact only sets up Sonnet 16 which suggests there is “a mightier way” for the young man to safeguard his existence, namely making a child. Which is why Sonnets 15 & 16, much as Sonnets 5 & 6 also belong together as a pair.

Some people surmise that Shakespeare may have addressed the Procreation Sonnets to his nephew, but not only is there absolutely no evidence of this being the case, it is also highly unlikely.

William was the oldest son of his parents and the oldest child to survive into adulthood and so it would have fallen to him to continue the family line. His younger brother Gilbert died childless and unmarried, his sister Joan did have several children through whom there are people traceable today who are in fact related to Shakespeare, and his youngest brother Edmund had a son, Edward, who would be the only nephew who in theory would seem a possible candidate.

Except he was nowhere near prominent or important enough to warrant anyone going to such lengths to try to convince him of the need to produce an heir, especially not in these terms.

As we know: nothing can be said with certainty, because everything is conjecture, except the words. But here, in summary, is what the words themselves tell us about the recipient of these first 17 Procreation Sonnets:

It is a young man: “Thou, that art now the world’s fresh ornament,” among many other references and the fact that he is being urged to have a son [1]; “that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest” [11], “your day of youth” [15]. These are just a few of the many very clear pointers we have that we are talking to a young man.

This young man is obstinate in his refusal to marry. The existence of the whole sequence itself suggests as much, as do direct references such as: “Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly” [8].

The young man is beautiful: “From fairest creatures we desire increase, | That thereby beauty’s rose might never die” [1]; “Then, being asked where all thy beauty lies” [2]; “Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee” [4]; “thy beauty” [12]; “that beauty which you hold in lease” [13]. There is no doubt then that the person we are talking to is considered to be beautiful.

He is also somewhat narcissistic: “thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes” [1] “for, having traffic with thyself alone” [4].

This may go as far as being somewhat prone to sexual self-sufficiency: “thou consumest thyself in single life”, “such murderous shame commits” [9].

The young man – and this is why a relative of Shakespeare's such as his nephew Edward simply doesn't really feature as a candidate here – is in the eyes of the world and has his admirers: “Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now” [2], and he is considered beautiful by the people around him:“The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell” [5], and Sonnet 7 more or less in its entirety, which compares the young man to the sun rising in the morning and everybody looking at the sun for as long as it is in its ascent and then losing interest once it descends in the evening. The contrast to “every private widow” [9]; and “thou art beloved of many” [10]. So we are in very little doubt about the young man being of status: he is known by the world: people consider him to be important.

He is a desirable eligible bachelor: “For where is she so fair, whose uneared womb | Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry” [3], “And many maiden gardens yet unset / With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers” [16]: we get a clear indication that at the very least William Shakespeare, but very possibly and probably people around him generally consider this young man to be a good catch.

The young man is principally, if not indeed solely, responsible for the upkeep of his name: “Or who is he so fond will be the tomb of his posterity” [3]; “Who lets so fair a house fall to decay” [13]. There is a reasonable argument to be made that if he weren't the only or oldest son then the burden of responsibility to carry on his family name and to produce an heir that continues the line would not rest so heavily on his shoulders.

The young man bears a striking or at the very least noteworthy resemblance to his mother: “Thou art thy mother’s glass” [3]. As we noted when discussing Sonnet 3, this is not something you say to just any young man: most young man would prefer to be compared to their father, most likely, especially in a very patriarchal society such as that of Elizabeth England in the late 16th, early 17th century.

The young man, apart from being beautiful and possibly somewhat petulant and narcissistic, is also “lovely” and his presence is described as “gracious and kind,” [10] though this may or may not, of course, be flattery on Shakespeare’s part.

The young man – and this is quite a crucial nugget of information we glean from the sonnets themselves – no longer has his father: “dear my love, you know | You had a father, let your son say so.” [13] This is not something you say to a young man who has his father, it would be an insult supreme to do so: we know that the young man at the time he receives these sonnets and is urged by Shakespeare to marry and have children no longer has his father.

Very little if any – in fact we can say nothing – of this points towards a known relative of Shakespeare’s. All of it, without exception applies to one particular young nobleman whom we may as well name now: Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton. He is not – I hasten to add, because I am as a podcaster on William Shakespeare's Sonnets duty bound to do so – the only candidate for the Fair Youth of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and we have no proof that even these first 17 Procreation Sonnets are addressed to him, but what we can establish with some degree of certainty is that every single point of those just listed applies to Henry Wriothesley.

He was born on 6 October 1573, which makes him 11 years younger than William Shakespeare who was born on or around the 23rd April 1564.. We don’t know when exactly Shakespeare writes these 17 or any other of his 154 sonnets, but we do know that they are first mentioned in 1598. It is therefore not only entirely possible but likely that these sonnets were written sometime before then. The Third Earl of Southampton was certainly young then: he turned 21 in 1594 and he was categorically unwilling to marry.

Coming of age and therefore into his inheritance, he paid the Lady Vere, whom he’d effectively been betrothed to, £5000 not to marry her. That’s roughly three million pounds in today’s money (or about 3.5 million euros or US dollars) to not marry someone. And this is not just some random person we are talking about, this is the Lady Vere. Lady Vere is none other that the granddaughter of Lord Burghley who just happens to be the Lord High Treasurer to the Queen and thus one of the most powerful men in the country.

You have to be quite determined not to marry someone if your potential bride is the granddaughter of the man who effectively holds the power of the country, who has the confidence and the trust of the Queen herself, who is after all a reigning monarch and to pay that person off with a small fortune. Or, by most people's standards today, you might argue, and I would agree with you, a fairly substantial fortune.

Whether or not the Third Earl of Southampton was beautiful is probably mostly a matter of taste but there’s little doubt that he was considered beautiful, not least by himself, that he had admirers, and that – as an immensely rich young aristocrat – he was a tremendous catch.

He is the only son of his parents, Henry Wriothesley, Second Earl of Southampton and Mary Wriothesley; he does as a young man absolutely bear a striking resemblance to his mother, and crucially, his father is no longer alive: the Second Earl of Southampton dies in 1581, when Henry, his son, is aged eight. And the person who becomes responsible for raising him is …Lord Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer to the Queen: one of the most powerful men in the country who then wants to marry him off to his granddaughter.

None of this proves anything. We simply do not know whether the Procreation Sonnets, which are the first 17 of the Fair Youth Sonnets, are written for and addressed to Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton. But it is possible, and plausible, so as not to say likely. He – of all the people we know of who could be considered candidates – fits the description.

And what we also do know is that in 1593, William Shakespeare dedicates his long narrative poem Venus and Adonis to the young Earl of Southampton, and one year later, in 1594, he follows this with another, by some margin more effusive dedication in the second of his narrative poems, The Rape of Lucrece. Which simply means that there clearly is a connection of some sorts between the two by the mid-1590s.

The other person who sometimes – in fact frequently – gets mentioned as a possible recipient of the Fair Youth Sonnets in general and the Procreation Sonnets in particular is William Herbert, the Third Earl of Pembroke.

He also refused several brides who were proposed to him and he was certainly young when he was doing so.

But while he does tick these two boxes, he does not match several others of the criteria that should be met:

He may or may not have borne a resemblance to his mother as a young man, but we don’t have any pictorial or other evidence that he did. He was a first, but not an only son, and his father does not die until 1601. This is still three years before he himself then finally does marry, aged 24, and so it is possible that William Shakespeare, having written several sonnets earlier, is tasked sometime between 1601 and 1604 to write these sonnets to the young William Herbert, not least because it is also possible, though not certain, that William Shakespeare in the 1590 was working with and for The Earl of Pembroke’s Men, a theatre company the 2nd Earl of Pembroke and Father to William Herbert was patron of. So a connection between the Pembroke family and Shakespeare may indeed also have existed.

Whether it is Henry Wriothesley, or William Herbert, or some other person who might have had these 17 sonnets written for him, the question still remains: why?

And while we don’t know the answer to this either, at least not for certain, the most plausible explanation and one that readily makes sense, is that Shakespeare was simply commissioned to do so by somebody who sought to urge the young man to take on his responsibilities and secure the continuation of his blood line. Who this might be is open entirely to speculation, and this to an extent where it would be imprudent here to make any suggestions, since any that we can make are almost entirely unfounded. There is no document that points to anyone, with one single exception: the publication of the Sonnets themselves.

This carries a famous and intensely debated dedication, and it is possible, though not at all certain, that this dedication points to the person who initiated some or many, though almost certainly not all of these sonnets. But that is for another special episode because it merits discussing in some considerable and considered detail.

Suffice it to say for now that while we know nothing for certain, and everything is conjecture, except the words, the words themselves actually draw a fairly individual picture. And it would not be in the least unlikely or unusual for a concerned relative, such as a mother, or a friend of the family to employ a working poet to write some poetry to prod the unruly heir to the family’s title to do the right thing and get married so as to produce a son and future heir.

At the same time there is almost no other plausible reason we can think of why William Shakespeare would have written these particular sonnets, and so I am inclined to reiterate: in the absence of certainty, likelihood is our friend. And the most likely explanation for the existence of the Procreation Sonnets to my mind is that William Shakespeare was commissioned to write them for the very rich, very beautiful, and exceptionally reluctant-to-marry Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton.

Overall the way the words characterise the recipient of these 17 sonnets seems to favour him somewhat, though not absolutely.

But of course, the Procreation Sonnets do not stand in isolation. We noted as we were listening to them, how they appear to chart a trajectory, and we shall notice how this trajectory yields quite naturally and almost seamlessly into the sonnets that follow.

And this will become a critical factor in drawing any conclusion as to who the young man might be, because these next few sonnets contain some extraordinarily revealing clues as to whom they are addressed to, and if there is any likelihood at all that that is the same person as the recipient of these Procreation Sonnets then we shall get much, much closer to the identity of the Fair Youth.

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