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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
xxix

ledge of Southampton's life as essential to a full knowledge of Shakespeare's. I have also printed in the Appendix a detailed statement of the precise circumstances under which Shakespeare's sonnets were published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609 (Section v), and a review of the facts that seem to me to confute the popular theory that Shakespeare was a friend and protégé of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, who has been put forward quite unwarrantably as the hero of the sonnets (Sections VI, VII, VIII).[1] I have also included in the Appendix (Sections Ix and x) a survey of the voluminous sonnet-literature of the Elizabethan poets between 1591 and 1597, with which Shakespeare's sonnetteering efforts were very closely allied, as well as a bibliographical note on a corresponding feature of French and Italian literature between 1550 and 1600.

Since the publication of the article on Shakespeare in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' I have received from correspondents many criticisms and suggestions which have enabled me to correct some errors. But a few of my correspondents have exhibited so ingenuous a faith in those forged documents relating to Shakespeare and forged references to his works, which were promulgated

  1. ↑ I have already published portions of the papers on Shakespeare's relations with the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton in the Fortnightly Review (for February of this year) and in the Cornhill Magazine (for April of this year), and I have to thank the proprietors of those periodicals for permission to reproduce my material in this volume.
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