But, all the same, the Shakespeareans, Mr. Armitage Brown among the rest, are determined that these sonnets shall be Shakespeare's and nobody else's, and proceed to tell us who "Mr. W. H." (to whom Mr. Thorpe, at William Shakespeare's request--as if the the man who wrote the sonnets could not write a dedication of them--dedicated them) is. Certain of them believe the letters "W. H." to be a transposition of "H. W.," in which case they might stand for "Henry Wriothesley," Earl of Southampton. Mr. Boaden and two Mr. Browns * read them, as they stand, to mean William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (in either case accounting for William Shakespeare addressing in earl as "Mr."--which may mean "Mister" or "Mas{280}ter"--on the score of earl and commoner having been the closest of "chums"). * Shakespeare's Autographical Poems." By Charles Armitage Brown. London, 1838. "The Sonnets of Shakespeare solved," etc. By Henry Brown. London, 1870. A learned Frenchman, M. Chasles, has conjectured that Thomas Thorpe wrote the first half of the dedication, including the "Mr. W. H.," and William Shakespeare the second half (including, perhaps, though M. Chasles does not say so, the "T. T.") One equally learned German (Herr Bernsdorff) suggests that "W. H." means "William Himself," and that the great Shakespeare meant to dedicate these poems to his own personality (as George Wither, in 1611, dedicated his satirical poems, "G. W. wisheth himself all happiness;") and another supposes Shakespeare to have been in love with a negress, "black but comely," like the lady of the Canticles. Yet another, that this dark lady typified "Dramatic art," the Roman Catholic church, etc., etc. Mr. Dowden will have it that Shakespeare and Spenser, and Mento that Shakespeare and Chapman were rivals for the lady's favor. And there have been other and even more puerile speculations put gravely forth by these same learned and venerable commentators: such as, since the word "Hewes" (in the line, "A man in Hewes all Hewes in his controlling"), is spelled with a capital letter, that, therefore, "AY. H." is William Hewes (whoever he might have been). Wadsworth believes that these sonnets were the repository of the real emotions of William Shakespeare, as a relief to long simulation of other people's emotions in his dramas; while Mr. William Thompson * believes them to be The Sonnett, which Bacon mentions writ{281}ing in or about 1598, saying: "It happened a little before that time that her Majesty had a purpose to dine at Twickenham Park, at which time I had (though I profess not to be a poet) prepared a _sonnet_, directly tending and alluding to draw on her Majesty's reconcilement to my lord, which I remember I also showed to a great person," etc. * The Renascence Drama, or History made Visible. By William Thompson, F. R. C. S., F. L. S. Melbourne: Sands & Me- Dougal, Collins street, West, 1880, p. 113, et seq.