IT is a mystery that has perplexed literary detectives for decades.

But Hampshire’s links to one of the greatest works of English literature may just have got a little weaker.

Many scholars believe that the 154 sonnets of William Shakespeare were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, whose family home was at Titchfield, near Fareham.

Wriothesley was a noted patron of the playwright and the dedication is to ‘Mr WH’, an inversion of Wriothesley’s initials.

Now an American academic, Geoffrey Caveney, has unearthed evidence that suggests WH is William Holme, a friend of Shakespeare’s publisher, and who died two years before the Sonnets were published in 1609.

Mr Caveney says that the Earl of Southampton would never have been addressed as ‘Mr’.

His research is due to be published in an Oxford University Press academic journal, Notes & Queries.

Prof Stanley Wells, a leading Shakespeare scholar, is reported in a national newspaper as saying: “If it were agreed by scholars, this would be pretty momentous. People have spilled an enormous quantity of ink trying to identify this figure.”