Willie Hughes - Tyrwhitt

Tyrwhitt

The identification was first proposed by Thomas Tyrwhitt in the eighteenth century, who noted a line in the 20th Sonnet "A man in hue, all Hues in his controlling", in which the word Hues is both italicised and capitalised in the original edition. When this is combined with various puns in the Sonnets on the name 'Will', and the fact that the sonnets are dedicated to one "Mr W.H.", it can be argued that the Sonnets covertly reveal that they are written to someone called William Hughes. Since music plays an important role in the sonnets, Tyrwhitt suggested that Hughes was a musician and an actor. A musician of that name is known to have served Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, but he would have been considerably older than Shakespeare.

In his influential 1790 edition of the sonnets Edmond Malone endorsed Tyrwhitt's suggestion, giving it wide circulation among scholars. He noted that Tyrwhitt had pointed out the "man in hue" line, "which inclines me to think that the initials W.H. stand for W. Hughes", "to this person, whoever he was, one hundred and twenty of the following poems are addressed."

Later writers took differing views. Some asserted that the capitalisation and italics were common in the Sonnets and did not imply that a proper name was being used. Others were willing to endorse the idea. In 1873, C.E. Brown was the first to connect Hughes with Essex's musician, suggesting that Shakespeare would have known "Will Hughes the favourite musician of the old Earl of Essex", who was mentioned in writings by Edward Waterhouse, Essex's secretary. Hughes is referred to as a musician who is called upon by the dying Earl to play music on the virginals to soothe his passage. However, his name also appears as Hayes or Howes.