LitLinks: Oscar Wilde & Shakespeare's Sonnets

The first sonnet begins:

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s Rose might never die

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory

This important sonnet introduces not only the whole book and its themes but also a series of sonnets about marriage and procreation. Many critics have taken them at face value and concluded that they are addressed to a beautiful young man who is single, entreating him to marry and have children so that his beauty may continue to exist: His tender heir might bear his memory.

Wilde himself uses these sonnets to reach the same conclusion to begin with but, later, he changes this to a more literary conclusion:

The children he begs him to beget are no children of flesh and blood, but more immortal children of undying fame. The whole cycle of the early sonnets is simply Shakespeare’s invitation to Willie Hughes to go upon the stage and become a player.

In one paragraph, in an ecstasy of discovery, the Narrator quotes from line ten of Sonnet 1, describing Willie Hughes as:

the herald of the spring

which is taken from lines nine and ten:

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring

Perhaps Wilde felt that ‘gaudy’ was an inappropriate attribute?

Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas – Wilde’s love and what proves to be the instrument of his downfall – also studied the Sonnets in his book ‘The True History of Shakespeare's Sonnets’ and tried to reprove Wilde’s theory without the enveloping fictional storyline. He, though, dated Sonnet 1 as Spring 1585 and he describes Wilde’s theory as beginning in 1594 or 95, a whole decade later. However, his big breakthrough came after publication when he discovered a William Hughes becoming a Freeman of Canterbury in 1593 after serving an apprenticeship with Christopher Marlowe's father, a shoemaker, John Marlowe. I consider this candidate in detail.

Finally, Wilde considers ‘A Lovers Complaint,’ which is the long poem which follows the 154 Sonnets. He sees in Shakespeare’s description of the lover a description of Willie Hughes and he calls him the ‘tender churl’ which is Shakespeare’s phrase taken from Sonnet 1 line 12:

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding

Shakespeare is upbraiding him for his selfishness.