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Edward de Vere's pen name "Shakespeare" was the Rival Poet of Sonnets 77-86, written in March 1601 while Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton languished as a convicted traitor in the Tower of London.
Oxford had linked Southampton to "Shakespeare" by the dedicated words which writers use of their fair subject, blessing every book, as he wrote in Sonnet 82, referring to the dedications of "Venus and Adonis" (1593) and "The Rape of Lucrece (1594):
I grant thou wert not married to my Muse
And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
During his 1601-1603 imprisonment, Southampton was a "dead man" in the eyes of the law and, therefore, no poets were publicly praising him. Oxford's only "rival" was his own pen name, the "better spirit" known as William Shakespeare, whose dedications to Southampton were continuing to appear in new editions:
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLEY,
EARLE OF SOUTHAMPTON AND BARON OF TITCHFIELD
THE LOVE I DEDICATE TO YOUR LORDSHIP
is without end, whereof this Pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous Moity. The warrant I have of your Honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored Lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship: To whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happiness.
Your Lordship's in all duty,
William Shakespeare.
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