IDEA Sonnet to the Readers

If you doubt Shakespeare you doubt his friends. Michael Drayton was a friend.

Mikey wrote sonnets and published them year after year from 1594-1637.

Instead of a numb-assedly ridiculous dedication to W.H. it has this quatorzain:

TO THE READER OF THESE SONNETS

Into these loves who but for passion looks,
At this first sight here let him lay them by,
And seek elsewhere in turning other books,
Which better may his labour satisfy.

No far-fetched sigh shall ever wound my breast;
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring;
Nor in “Ah me’s!” my whining sonnets drest,
A libertine fantasticly I sing.

My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change;
To choice of all variety inclined,
And in all humours sportively I range.

My muse is rightly of the English strain,
That cannot long one fashion entertain.

Now why didn’t Will do that? Yes why? Cry the authorshipists.

But really though, why didn’t Mikey D. ever say anything about Will of Straftford not being the writer of the sonnets and plays and poems?

He can’t not have known? And why didn’t Drayton write any form of eulogy or biography for Will either?

He knew Drummond of Hawthornden and corresponded with him for 13 years. Drummond collected Shakespeare’s plays, writing by Will Sha. in the flyleaf.

Sh didn’t know Drummond or Drummond would have said so.

Drummond also meets Ben Jonson in 1618 when he walked to Scotland. Another lifelong mate of Will’s.

Jonson bigging himself up and knocking down his contemporaries. Liked his drink did our Ben. Two years since the death of our Will.

Drummond slyly recorded the lot in his diary, which he kept til after his death. Only then was it made public.

Why did none of these people speak out if Will was a Milli-Vanilli sham?