William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke
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- For other persons named William Herbert, see William Herbert (disambiguation).
William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, KG, PC (April 8, 1580 – April 10, 1630) was the son of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and his third wife Mary Sidney. Chancellor of the University of Oxford, he founded Pembroke College, Oxford with James VI of Scotland and I of England. He was also the patron of William Shakespeare.
He married Mary Talbot, daughter of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, on 4 November 1604. He died in 1630, aged 50 and childless, and his titles passed to his brother, Philip Herbert.
[edit] Herbert and Shakespeare's Sonnets
Herbert is one of several aristocrats claimed to be the model for the character of the youthful 'Fair Lord' in William Shakespeare's sonnets, whom the poet urges to marry. Since Herbert, some years Shakespeare's junior, was a patron of the playwright, and since his initials match with the dedication of the Sonnets to one "Mr. W.H.", "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets", he is a popular candidate, although Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton has also been popular. E. K. Chambers, who had previously considered Southampton to be the Fair Lord changed his mind when he encountered evidence in letters that young Herbert had been urged to wed Elizabeth Carey around 1595. [1] In her Arden Shakespeare edition of the Sonnets, Katherine Duncan-Jones argues that Herbert is by far the likeliest candidate. [2]
[edit] References
- ^ Chambers, Short Life, 1956, pp.129-30.
- ^ Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed. Shakespeare's Sonnets (1997), pp. 52-69.
