mitted to be common to both Pembroke and Shakespeare's alleged friend,
they all prove to be equally indistinctive. All could be matched without
difficulty in a score of youthful noblemen and gentlemen of Elizabeth's
Court. Direct external evidence of Shakespeare's friendly intercourse
with one or other of Elizabeth's young courtiers must be produced before
the sonnets' general references to the youth's beauty and grace can
render the remotest assistance in establishing his identity.

Aubrey's ignorance of any relation between Shakespeare and Pembroke.

Although it may be reckoned superfluous to adduce more arguments,
negative or positive, against the theory that the Earl of Pembroke was a
youthful friend of Shakespeare, it is worth noting that John Aubrey, the
Wiltshire antiquary, and the biographer of most Englishmen of distinction
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was zealously researching
from 1650 onwards into the careers alike of Shakespeare and of various
members of the Earl of Pembroke's family--one of the chief in Wiltshire.
Aubrey rescued from oblivion many anecdotes--scandalous and
otherwise--both about the third Earl of Pembroke and about Shakespeare.
Of the former he wrote in his 'Natural History of Wiltshire' (ed.
Britton, 1847), recalling the earl's relations with Massinger and many
other men of letters. Of Shakespeare, Aubrey narrated much lively gossip
in his 'Lives of Eminent Persons.' But neither in his account of
Pembroke nor in his account of Shakespeare does he give any hint that
they were at any time or in any manner acquainted or associated with one
another. Had close relations existed between them, it is impossible that
all trace of them would have faded from the traditions that were current
in Aubrey's time and were embodied in his writings. {415}

VIII.--THE 'WILL' SONNETS.

No one has had the hardihood to assert that the text of the sonnets gives
internally any indication that the youth's name took the hapless form of
'William Herbert;' but many commentators argue that in three or four
sonnets Shakespeare admits in so many words that the youth bore his own
Christian name of Will, and even that the disdainful lady had among her
admirers other gentlemen entitled in familiar intercourse to similar
designation. These are fantastic assumptions which rest on a
misconception of Shakespeare's phraseology and of the character of the
conceits of the sonnets, and are solely at