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Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton was the Fair Youth of the Sonnets by William Shakespeare:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's Rose might never die...
Sonnet 1, lines 1-2
From royal children his parents command heirs,
So that Elizabeth's Tudor Rose dynasty might not die when she does...
(Did Elizabeth Tudor, Queen Elizabeth I of England, have any previous children by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester? See links below.)
Southampton's earldom motto was:
UNG par TOUT, TOUT par UNG
ONE for ALL, ALL for ONE
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
(Sonnet 76)
Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing.
(Sonnet 8)
And thou, all they, has all the all of me.
(Sonnet 31)
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so...
One thing expressing, leaves out difference...
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,
Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.
(Sonnet 105)
The Royal Identity of the Fair Youth
“The Sonnets regularly express love through metaphors from royalty and its derivatives, using such phrases as my sovereign, thy glory, lord of my love, embassy of love, commanded by the motion of thine eyes …
"At their greatest moments the Sonnets are really less love-poetry than an almost religious adoration … Royal images recur … The poet addresses the youth as lord of my love, to whom he sends a written ambassage; he is my sovereign and the poet his servant or slave …
"The loved one is royal…
"He is crowned with various gifts of nature and fortune, especially all those beauties whereof now he’s King.
"Like a sovereign, he radiates worth, his eyes lending a double majesty …
"Our final impression is of love itself as king, of some super-personality, the Sun … The associations are just, since the king, properly understood, holds within society precisely this super-personal and supernal function …
"Kingship is naturally golden, and golden impressions recur with similar variations in use … The Sun is nature’s king, and also pre-eminently golden. Throughout Shakespeare king and sun are compared … With the Fair Youth, the association of that Sun, thine eye comes easily enough…
“We have various clusters of king, gold, and sun. Kings and gold come together in the gilded monuments of Princes; and sun and gold, when the Sun’s gold complexion is dimmed in the sonnet, Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day, or the young man graces the day and gilds the evening in place of stars. We may have all three. So great Princess’ favorites are compared to the marigold opening to the Sun’s eye … These impressions are not just decoration … That the poet of the Sonnets was deeply concerned with such themes is clear from the many comparisons of his love to kings and state-affairs. His very love is felt as royal and stately. The Sonnets are the heart of Shakespeare’s royal poetry.”
– G. Wilson Knight, The Mutual Flame, 1955, and The Sovereign Flower, 1958
“It is well known that, following a general Renaissance practice drawn from antiquity, kings commonly figured as earthly ‘suns’ in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries … ‘Gods on earth’ was proverbially used of kings as far back as Menander, and is frequent in Shakespeare …
"‘Ocean’ or ‘sea’ as a figure for king is often found in Shakespeare and his fellow-writers.
"Here, then, we have Shakespeare typifying his Friend variously as a sun, a god, an ocean or a sea: three familiar metaphors which he and his contemporaries use to represent a sovereign prince or king … Whatever may be meant by it here in the Sonnets, the Shakespearean and Elizabethan element common to the three is certainly king, and the metaphors exhibit a consistency of reference.”
There are various usages in the Sonnets of succession, heir and issue, and these are terms that Shakespeare “elsewhere applies to the paramount problems of royalty.”
In Sonnet 9 “his Friend dying a bachelor without issue will leave the world his widow, contrasted by the poet with every private widow – that is, the widow of ‘a private man’ as distinguished from a ruler, a king.”
This “sustained and unmistakable” royal language in the Sonnets makes it obvious that “what he sets before us” is an array of powers “peculiar to a king: power to grant charters of privilege and letters patent, power to pardon crimes – in short, the exclusively royal prerogative.”
And we “need no reminder that it was to the king, and to no mortal but the king, that his dutiful subjects and vassals offered oblations; similarly, that it was only to the monarch or ruling magistrate that embassies were directed.”
Of the poet’s use of largess and bounty: “Of largess it is significant to note that in his other works Shakespeare applies it only to the gifts or donatives of kings. As for bounty, the poet’s attribution of this grace to kings, while not exclusive, is characteristic …
"In the same way we recognize grace, state, and glory typically in Shakespeare’s kings...
“Clearly these consenting terms ... cannot be dismissed as scattered surface-ornament. They are intrinsic. What is more, they intensify each other. By direct address, by varied metaphor, and by multifarious allusion, the description of the Friend communicated is always one: monarch, sovereign prince, king ... The harping on the same string is so insistent as to make one ask why it has not arrested attention. No doubt everyone has regarded this king sense as formal hyperbole and nothing more. Any literal meaning looks quite incredible – a rank impossibility.”
- Leslie Hotson, Mr. W. H., 1965
Queen Elizabeth's coat-of arms motto was:
SEMPER EADEM
EVER THE SAME
Why write I still all one, ever the same...
(The above statement by Edward Vere, E.Ver,
declaring that he writes exclusively
in the Sonnets about
All One, Ever the Same,
Henry Wriothesley & Elizabeth Tudor
THE CASE OF ARTHUR DUDLEY, the young man claiming to be the son of Queen Elizabeth by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester:
A SUMMARY
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