Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, (pronunciation uncertain: "Rezley", "Rizely" (archaic), (present-day) and have been suggested; 6 October 1573 – 10 November 1624), was the only son of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, and Mary Browne, daughter of the 1st Viscount Montagu. William Shakespeare's two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, were dedicated to Southampton, who is frequently identified as the Fair Youth of Shakespeare's Sonnets.
Family Henry Wriothesley, born 6 October 1573 at Cowdray House, Sussex, was the only son of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, by Mary Browne. She was the only daughter of Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montague, and his first wife, Jane Radcliffe.. He had two sisters, Jane, who died before 1573, and Mary (), who in June 1585 married Thomas Arundell, 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour.; ; ;.
After his father's death, Southampton's mother married firstly, on 2 May 1594, as her second husband, Sir Thomas Heneage (d. 17 October 1595), Vice-Chamberlain of the Household. After being widowed again, she married, between 5 November 1598 and 31 January 1599, Sir William Hervey. She died in November 1607.; ; .
Early life When his father died on 4 October 1581, Southampton inherited the earldom and landed income valued at £1,097 6s per annum. He became a royal ward until late 1590 (Court of Wards and Liveries). His wardship and marriage were sold by the Queen to her kinsman, Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, for £1,000. According to Akrigg, Howard "entered into some further agreement, of which no documentation can now be found, which transferred to Lord Burghley personally the custody and marriage of the young Earl, but left Howard holding his lands." Late in 1581 or early in 1582 Southampton, then eight years of age, went to live at Cecil House in the Strand..
In October 1585, at age twelve, Southampton entered St John's College, Cambridge,Cokayne states that he matriculated 11 December 1585. graduating M.A. on 6 June 1589.; ; . His name was entered at the Gray's Inn legal society before he left the university, and he was admitted on 29 February 1588.; .
On Southampton's 16th birthday, 6 October 1589, Lord Burghley noted Southampton's age in his diary. By 1590 Burghley was negotiating with Southampton's grandfather, Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montague, and Southampton's mother, Mary, for a marriage between Southampton and Lord Burghley's eldest granddaughter, Elizabeth Vere, daughter of Burghley's daughter, Anne Cecil, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. But Southampton did not like the match and, in a letter written in November 1594, about six weeks after Southampton had turned 21, the Jesuit Henry Garnet reported the rumour that "The young Erle of Southampton refusing the Lady Veere payeth £5000 of present payment".; .
In 1591, Lord Burghley's Clerk in Chancery, John Clapham, dedicated to Southampton a poem in Latin, Narcissus, recounting the Greek legend of a beautiful young man who perishes through self-love. According to Akrigg, Southampton was now spending much of his time at court. He was in attendance when Queen Elizabeth visited the University of Oxford in late September 1592 and was praised in the Latin poem written by John Sandford to commemorate the queen's visit.Robert Giroux, 1982, The Book Known As Q: A consideration of Shakespeare's sonnets, Atheneum, p. 80
In October 1592 Southampton's grandfather, Viscount Montague, died. Montague had been a Knight of the Garter, and on 3 May 1593, Philip Gawdy of Clifford's Inn (a law school and Inn of Chancery) wrote to his brother, Bassingbourne Gawdy II, that Southampton had been nominated to the Order, together with the Lord Keeper, Lord Burgh, and Lord Willoughby de Eresby. Shortly thereafter, in his Honour of the Garter dated 26 June 1593, George Peele referred to him as "Gentle Wriothesley, Southampton's star", claiming erroneously that an Earl of Southampton had been among the founding Knights.; ; ; . However, it was not until 1603 that Southampton was invested in the Order under King James.
Southampton and Shakespeare
In 1593 Shakespeare dedicated his narrative poem Venus and Adonis to Southampton, followed in 1594 by The Rape of Lucrece. Although the dedication to Venus and Adonis is more restrained, the dedication to The Rape of Lucrece is couched in extravagant terms: The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end ... What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. This type of vaunting language was not particularly unusual, however, because other dedications of the day always excessively praised any noble person sponsoring the author's work – mainly for political and, above all, financial reasons.
Nathan Drake, in Shakespeare and his Times (1817), was the first to suggest that Southampton was not only the dedicatee of Shakespeare's two long narrative poems, but also the "Fair Youth" of the Sonnets.. The title page refers to the "onlie begetter of these sonnets Mr W.H.," and it had earlier been inferred that the Sonnets were addressed to "Mr. W.H.". Drake, however, adopting Chalmers' suggestion that one meaning of "beget" is "bring forth", argued that Mr. W.H. was the procurer of the manuscript rather than the "Fair Youth" addressed in the poems. Confirmation of this as also that "Mr. W.H." was the William Hervey who married Southampton's mother and inherited 'her goods' is provided by Edward Chaney.; cf. Other adherents of the theory that Southampton was the addressee of the Sonnets have suggested that his initials, H.W. (Henry Wriothesley), were simply reversed by the publisher to conceal his identity. Academic Park Honan argues that although Southampton may be involved in Shakespeare's sonnets ... there is no real likelihood that he traduced him by drawing his portrait as the fickle, treacherous Young Man of the sonnets, who is implicitly "lascivious" (sonnet 95), "sensual" to a "fault" or to his "shame" (sonnets 34, 35), and ridden with vices.
Despite extensive archival research, no documents have been found concerning their relationship apart from the dedications to Shakespeare's two long narrative poems. Nicholas Rowe, on the authority of poet and playwright William Davenant (1606 – 7 April 1668), stated in his Life of Shakespeare that Southampton once gave Shakespeare £1,000 to "go through with a purchase", but Honan terms this a myth.
The 1590s Southampton received dedications from other writers in the 1590s. On 27 June 1593 Thomas Nashe completed his picaresque novel, The Unfortunate Traveller, and dedicated it to Southampton,The dedication was withdrawn from the second edition. terming him "a dere lover and cherisher ... as well of the lovers of Poets, as of Poets themselves",; . and in 1593 Barnabe Barnes published Parthenophil and Parthenope with a dedicatory sonnet to Southampton.. In 1595 Gervase Markham included a dedicatory sonnet to Southampton in The Most Honorable Tragedy of Richard Grinvile, Knight.. On 2 March 1596 John Florio's Italian/English dictionary was entered in the Stationers' Register.It was not published until 1598. In his dedication, Florio, who was for some years in the Earl's "pay and patronage", complimented Southampton on his fluency in Italian, saying he "had become so complete a master of Italian as to have no need of travel abroad to perfect his mastery of that tongue".. In 1597 Henry Lok included a sonnet to Southampton among the sixty dedicatory sonnets in his Sundry Christian Passions.. In the same year William Burton dedicated to him a translation of Achilles Tatius's, Clitophon and Leucippe..
On 4 October 1594 Southampton's friend, Sir Henry Danvers, shot Henry Long, brother of Sir Walter Long, in the course of a local feud between the Danvers and Long families. Sir Henry and his elder brother, Sir Charles Danvers, fled to Titchfield, where Southampton sheltered them. The brothers were outlawed, and eventually escaped to the continent where they took refuge at the court of King Henri IV..
On 17 November 1595, Southampton jousted in Queen Elizabeth's accession day tournament, earning a mention in George Peele's Anglorum Feriae as "gentle and debonaire". However, according to Akrigg, "Gentle and debonair he may have been, but we never again hear of Southampton being high in the graces of Queen Elizabeth"..
On 13 April 1596 the Queen specifically instructed Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, not to take either Southampton or the Earl of DerbyAccording to Akrigg, Southampton and Derby were "rather close friends at this period"; . with him on an expedition for the Relief of Calais, and it also appears that Southampton did not accompany Essex on the Cadiz Expedition that summer.; Honan states that Southampton did go with Essex to Cadiz; . In February 1597 Southampton challenged the Earl of Northumberland to a duel with rapiers, requiring intervention by the Queen and Privy Council, and on 1 March stood godfather at the christening of Sir Robert Sidney's daughter, Bridget. Later that year Southampton was with Essex on his "inglorious" Voyage to the Azores, where according to Rowland Whyte, "My Lord of Southampton fought with one of the Kings great Men of Warre, and suncke her". On his return, he made his first appearance in the House of Lords on 5 November, and was put on several committees, but became a "chronic absentee". By this time he was in serious financial difficulties, and had turned over administration of his estates to two trustees, who by the end of the year had sold some of his lands..
In 1598 Southampton was involved in a brawl at court with Ambrose Willoughby,Ambrose Willoughby, second son of Charles Willoughby, 2nd Baron Willoughby of Parham, is also mentioned in a letter of 17 June 1602 from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton: "Gray Bridges hath hurt Ambrose Willoughby in the heade and body, for abusing his father and himself at a conference of arbiterment twixt them and Mistris Bridges"; . one of the Queen's esquires of the body, who had ordered him to leave the presence chamber where he was playing the card game primero after the Queen had retired for the evening. Southampton struck Willoughby, and "Willoughby puld of some of his locke", for which the Queen gave Willoughby thanks, saying "he had done better yf he had sent hym to the porters lodge, to see who durst have fetcht hym out".; . There is a suggestion that underlying the altercation was something Willoughby had said which caused trouble between Southampton and his mistress, Elizabeth Vernon, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour. The Queen forbade Southampton to present himself at court, although he was soon allowed back. Nonetheless, it was reported by Rowland Whyte at the beginning of February that "My Lord of Southampton is much troubled at her Majesties straungest Usage of hym". Faced with his financial difficulties and the Queen's disfavour, Southampton determined to live abroad for a time, and seized the opportunity of accompanying Sir Robert Cecil on an embassy to Henri IV of France. On 6 February Southampton was granted licence to travel abroad for two years, and by March he and Cecil were in Angers, where on 7 March Southampton was presented to the French King..