existences. Shakespeare’s inscribed sonnets in 1609 were “To 
the onlie begetter . . .  all happinesses and that eternitie 
promised by our ever-living Poet, wisheth the well-wishing 
adventurer in setting forth.”

     The ever-living poet lives ever in print, that is, and 
promises that eternity of the printed word (ever so much more 
assured than the manuscript eternity of a message in a bottle) 
to “the onlie begetter.” It is only proper that the identity of the 
begetter should be as mysterious as the poetic process by 
which the sonnets were created. Since, however, eternity is now 
assured for the begetter as he sets forth on a new life of 
printed poetic existence, the poet wishes him well, even as he is 
wishing himself well, in his printed voyage through eternity. And 
so follows the setting forth of (and in) the text of the sonnets, 
just ten years after the Elizabethan sonnet vogue had passed.