Watts in a name?

Juliet, in a very famous speech in Romeo and Juliet, wishes that Romeo had another name. This would be a perfect place for Christopher Marlowe to give readers a clue about his alias in exile, especially in the form of his favorite device, a pun. So, we have:

What’s in a name?  [Watts in a name?]

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.43

And, if Stephen Booth in his edition of The Sonnets can suggest that “William” might be intended in Sonnet 121, then why not a hint of “William Watts” in Sonnet 136?

Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me for my name is Will.

Shakespeare, The Sonnets, 136.13-14 (emphasis added)

[above is taken from my HLAS post on July 29, 2002 (edited)]

Comments:

There really was a mysterious Englishman by the name of William Watts who was a resident of Malta during most of the time period that William Shakespeare wrote his plays. I use the word mysterious only because historical research has yet to uncover many details of his life. Victor Mallia-Milanes, an historian of Malta, offers these rare comments about William Watts (emphasis added):

William Watts, “an Englishman resident in Malta”, was the first in a long, unbroken chain of English consuls on the island. The date of his appointment is unknown. There is no trace of it in the Libri Bullarum; but a document, dated 15 November 1610, refers to John Watts being accredited consul by the Grandmaster “pro natione Anglica et Belgica” in Malta, to fill the vacancy created by the death of his father William. We have so far very little information about William Watts. According to the evidence provided by the legal proceedings in a lawsuit instituted against the English merchant John Lucas in the 1580’s, it transpires that William Watts, who held in his possession the key of Lucas’s residence, was helping notary Guglielmo Briffa compile an inventory of all the things in Lucas’s house. Notarial Archives of Malta still await scrutiny by the diligent historian. Here is enormous, wide scope for research in the economic and social history of Malta and the Mediterranean, providing ample virgin material for any doctoral dissertation.

(Mallia-Milanes 1975, 353-54, reprint)

Also, Andrew Vella, another historian of Malta, mentions William Watts and Watts’ Italianate name “Guglielmo Guacz” in an earlier article in the journal Melita Historica (1970, 214-34, reprint).

The date of William Watts’ death seems to pose a problem for the validity of “The Malta Theory”. Indeed, did William Watts really die sometime before his son was appointed consul to Malta on 15 November 1610? Or, was Christopher Marlowe’s cover as William Watts in danger of being blown, forcing him to abandon his identity on Malta? Hard to say. William Watts may have been simply William Watts the merchant, the commoner, the family-man on Malta with no relation whatsoever to Marlowe and Shakespeare. Very possible.

Then again, it could be that Sir William Harvey, the W.H. of The Sonnets, discovered many documents besides manuscripts of beautiful sonnets in the possession of his wife after her death. Harvey’s wife was the mother of the 3rd Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriostheley. Was she, as a devout Catholic and part of a Continental network of English Catholic exiles, Marlowe’s conduit to England for all his correspondence? If so, then the publication of The Sonnets in 1609, presented a danger to Marlowe and those in high places who had helped him escape persecution in 1593. Under these hypothetical circumstances, Marlowe’s identity in Malta would have to be abandoned, and he would need to be pulled from that island. His cover could be blown, just like the cover of American CIA agent Valerie Plame was blown in 2003.

Notes:

very famous speech:

“William” might be intended in Sonnet 121:
See Booth 1977, 410.

Which in their Wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level

Shakespeare, The Sonnets, 121.8-9 (emphasis added)