as the poet-speaker, in a role-reversal with the Muse, begins to actively lead the Muse towards the couplet and there provides the Muse with a solution to the problem of "what to say and how to say it" thus ensuring that memory of youth will endure. Context Within the sonnet sequence In addition to Sonnet 100, Sonnet 101 is recognized as one of the only two sonnets in the complete sequence which directly invokes the Muse. These two sonnets in turn are part of the group of four sonnets, 100–103, wherein the poet-speaker deflects blame for his silence from himself onto the Muse, making excuses for having not written or if writing, not writing adequately. Dubrow notes the use here of occupatio, that rhetorical method of announcing a topic which one will not discuss and by that announcement already commencing a discussion of it. On the other hand, Stirling has noted the differences of 100–101 from 102–103 and from the larger group 97–104, and that by removing them, one creates a more cohesive sequence (97–99, 102–104) tied together by "the theme of absence and 'return'". A new position for 100–101 is suggested as the introduction to a sequence (100–101, 63–68, 19, 21, 105) which develops with its "twin ideas of Time the destroyer—Verse the preserver." As mentioned above, the large group 61–103 was probably written mainly in the first half of the 1590s, and presented unrevised in 1609. Together with two other groups, 1–60 ("... written mainly in the first half of the 1590s; revised or added to after 1600, perhaps as late as 1608 or 1609") and 104-26 ("... written around or shortly after 1600") they make up the largest subsection known as the Fair Youth Sonnets (1-126). The other three internal sequences of note are the Procreation sequence (1-17), the Rival Poet sequence (78-86) and the Dark Lady sequence (127-154). Within Elizabethan literary society The two most likely candidates for the Fair Youth are Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, an early patron of Shakespeare, and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, a later patron. Duncan-Jones argues that Pembroke is the more likely candidate. She also suggests that John Davies of Hereford, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, and Ben Jonson are all plausible candidates for the role of Rival Poet in Sonnets 78–86. Atkins argues that pursuing a biographical context to the poems in Shakespeare's sequence is nonsensical and