Willie Hughes

The "Fair Youth" is a handsome, effeminate young man to whom the poet addresses many passionate sonnets.

In his influential 1790 edition of the sonnets Edmond Malone endorsed Tyrwhitt's suggestion, giving it wide circulation among scholars.

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.

[1] The idea was explored in greater detail by Oscar Wilde in his short story "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", in which Hughes is transmuted from a musician into a seductive boy-actor working in Shakespeare's company.

He also argues that the puns in Sonnets 135 and 143 make it clear that the Fair Youth's first name was Will, excluding the other popular candidate, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

However, the references to "Will" in the poems are often read as a pun on the author's own name, and no.135 and 143 are widely believed to be addressed to the Dark Lady, not the Fair Youth.

[5] The writer Percy Allen created a new twist on the theory when he claimed in 1934 that Hughes was the illegitimate son of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth I.

In accordance with the Oxfordian theory, Allen believed that de Vere was the true author of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.

De Vere wrote the sonnets for his son, giving a coded account of his relationship to the "dark lady", the Queen.