The Fair Youth

"My better angel is a man right fair"
Shakespeare, Sonnet 144 (1599 version)

Many readers have assumed that the dedication's mysterious "Mr. W.H." was also the Fair Youth of the poems. But who was Mr. W.H.?

The most popular candidates are:

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (his initials being WH inverted)
· Dedicatee of Shakespeare's narrative poems: Venus and Adonis in 1593, and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594

William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (WH)
· One of the "Incomparable Brethren" to whom the First Folio is dedicated
· Fathered an illegitimate child on Mary Fitton (one of the Dark Lady candidates)

It would take a brave or foolhardy printer, however, to refer to either of these proud and hot-tempered noblemen as a mere "Mr." And it would have taken a brave poet to address them in the intimate way that Shakespeare — or his narrator — addresses the Fair Youth.

"W.H." could be a printing error for "W. S." or "W. Sh."
· Given the letter-shapes of Elizabethan handwriting, this is not so farfetched as it might seem.
· All other Elizabethan dedications that use the term "begetter" do so to refer to the author.
· Although this theory makes some sense of W.H., it doesn't help with the Fair Youth problem.