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- SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 35
The dedication to Mr. W. H.
There is no ground for the common assumption that ‘T. T.’ in addressing the dedication of Shakespeare’s sonnets to ‘Mr. W. H.’ was transgressing the ordinary law affecting publishers’ dedications, and was covertly identifying the ‘lovely’ youth whom Shakespeare had eulogized in his sonnets. A study of Elizabethan and Jacobean bibliography can alone interpret the situation aright. In all probability Thorpe in the dedication of the Sonnets followed the analogy of his dedication of Marlowe’s Lucan in 1600. There he selected for patron Blount, his friend-in-trade, who had aided him in the publication. His chosen patron of the edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets in 1609 was doubtless one who stood to him in a similar business relation.
Although Thorpe’s buoyant and self-complacent personality slightly coloured his style, his dedicatory address to ‘Mr. W. H.’ followed, with slight variations, the best recognized and most conventional of the dedicatory formulae of the day. He framed his salutation of ‘Mr. W. H.’ into a wish for his patron’s ‘all happiness’ and ‘eternity’.¹
¹ The formula was of great antiquity. Dante employed it in the dedication of his Divina Commedia, which ran: ‘Domino Kanl Grandi de Scala devotissimus suus Dante Allgherius . . . vitam optat per tempora diuturna felicem, et gloriosi nominis in perpetuum incrementum.’ The Elizabethan dedicator commonly ‘wisheth’ his patron ‘all happiness’ and ‘eternity’ (or periphrases to that effect) by way of prelude or heading to a succeeding dedicatory epistle, but numerous examples could be adduced where the dedicator, as in Thorpe’s case, left the ‘wish’ to stand alone, and where no epistle followed it. Thorpe’s dedicatory procedure and choice of type was obviously influenced by Ben Jonson’s form of dedication before the first edition of his Volpone, which Thorpe published for Jonson in 1607 and which Eld printed. On the first leaf, following the title, appears in short lines (in the same fount of large capitals as that used in Thorpe’s dedication to ‘Mr. W. H.’) these words: ‘To the Most Noble | and Most Aequall | Sisters | The Two Famous Universities | For their Love | And | Acceptance | Shewn | To his Poeme | in the Presentation | Ben: Ionson | The Gratefyll Acknowledger | Dedicates | Both It and Himselfe |.’ In very small type, at the right-hand corner of the
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