The Shakespeare Code

The Swan Theatre in Paris Gardens

In 1596 a Dutch tourist, Johannes de Witt, travelled to London and wrote a Latin account, now lost, of his journey. 

One of the things de Witt saw was the splendid new Swan Theatre in the Paris Gardens. He made his own sketch of it, and, though the original (like the book) was lost, Arendt van Buchell had made a copy of it.

 It depicts the best theatre in London, one that held 3,000 spectators and boasted columns so beautifully painted one would swear they were made of marble, just like the Theatre at Rome…

De Witt also drew a scene from one of the productions.  It is clearly the moment in Twelfth Night when Malvolio shows off his cross-gartering to the Countess Olivia and her waiting-woman, Maria….

Swan Theatre

Except it cannot be Twelfth Night.

Shakespeare hadn’t written it in 1596.

Or had he…?

The Shakespeare Code believes it has solved this puzzle. 

The Twelfth Night that has come down to us from the 1623 First Folio is not the original version played by William Shakespeare’s company.

The original was the play at the Swan which de Witt sketched.

It was called What You Will – the sub-title to Twelfth Night. The only sub-title in the whole of Shakespeare…

How the play ended up at the Paris Gardens is a story in itself….

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What You Will started life as an Italian play called Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones) written and presented in Siena in 1531 by the Academy of the Intronati.

In 1543, one C. Estienne translated the work into French as Le Sacrifice.

In 1546/7, The Fellows and Scholars of Queen’s College, Cambridge translated the play into Latin and performed it at the College as Laelia Modenas. (Laelia is the original name of Viola).

On 1st March, 1595, two Fellows of Queens’ (George Meriton and George Mountaine) produced a new version of the play, probably in English, for the visit to the College of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex . He stayed at the President’s Lodge, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world…

Essex stayed here in 1595

Laelia was performed  ‘after dinner’ [i.e. our ‘lunch’] ‘the day being turned into night..’ [i.e. a dark, wet, March, fenlands afternoon…]

John Weever, a Queens’ man (and one of Shakespeare’s first champions) wrote in his book of Epigrams that:

 ‘far-famed’ Laelia [had made Queens’] the ‘Queen of Colleges’…

John Weever, Shakespeare fan, with hand on skull...

The Shakespeare Code  believes that  Shakespeare would have seen this College production for the following reasons:

1. He was part of the Essex/Southampton entourage, acting sometimes as amanuensis and secretary to both Earls.

2. He was starting, especially through his narrative poetry, to be famous in the two Universities.

3. Just two Epigrams after his Epigram on Laelia, Weever writes a Sonnet in praise of  ‘Honey-tongued Shakespeare’ (iv.22).

4. The book of Epigrams itself was dedicated to ‘the Right Worshipful and worthy honoured gentleman, Richard Houghton of Houghton Tower’ – the same Roman Catholic Houghton family that had sheltered Papist Shakespeare in Lancashire when he was a teenager.

Weever clearly knew Shakespeare both as a writer and a man. So Shakespeare (through Weever) had his own strong links with Queens’ College.

Thomas Nashe would also have been at the performance because:

a.  He was a Cambridge man.

b. He was Shakespeare’s collaborator.

c. He would go anywhere for a free lunch.

The Shakespeare Code believes that Shakespeare and Nashe re-wrote the Laelia play, named it What You Will and took it to the new Swan Theatre in London.

The reasons for this belief are as follows:

a.  The Weever Epigram placed directly after the Sonnet in praise of Shakespeare mentions the new ‘Thames’s Swan’ [theatre] which Weever claims has eclipsed the Theatre at Rome.

b. Shakespeare’s habit (and that of his company) was to ‘utilise’ the work of university scholars.

See…

i. ‘Robert Greene’s’  Groats-worth of Wit  ‘upstart crow’ pamphlet [penned, in reality, by Thomas Nashe] which accuses Shakespeare of plagiarising the writings of University Scholars i.e. Nashe himself.

'Robert Greene' i.e. Thomas Nashe, penning his attack on Shakespeare's plagiarism in his shroud...

ii.  The Parnassus Plays, performed at St. John’s College, Cambridge Christmas/New Year, 1601/2 which have a scene showing  Burbage and Kemp plotting to employ Cambridge students as writers ‘at a low rate’.

c. Shakespeare’s  company was, at the time, playing at the Swan Theatre in the Paris Gardens.

The Code believes this because:

(i) Shakespeare’s name, in 1596, was closely and indeed criminally attached to that of  the crook  Francis  Langley, who built the Swan Theatre and owned the Paris Gradens.

1596 restraining order issued to Shakespeare and Langley to 'keep the peace'.

(ii) Thomas Lodge, in 1596, in Wit’s Miserie writes about..

the visard of the ghost which cried so miserably at the Theatre like an oyster-wife, Hamlet, Revenge..

(iii) In 1601/2, Thomas Dekker (in Satiro-Mastix ) has the character Tucca say:

My name’s ‘Hamlet,  revenge’. Thou hast been at Paris Garden, hast thou not?

The Ghost of Hamlet's father.

(iv) In 1596, Henry Carey, the first Lord Hunsdon (and Lord Chamberlain) died. William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham became the Lord Chamberlain in his place.

The Lord Chamberlain was automatically in charge of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men of which Shakespeare was a member.  And the Lord Chamberlain was also automatically in charge of the entertainment at Court.

Brooke was the mortal enemy of the Earl of Essex – and consequently a mortal enemy of the Earl of Southampton and Shakespeare. 

Sir George Carey, the first Lord Hunsdon’s son, leapt in to protect the group, as his father had done. 

 He’d had a furious row with Sir Robert Cecil in 1593 and hated the ‘Cecil faction’ at the Court of which Brooke was a leading member.  

As ‘Lord Hunsdon’s Men’ (the name they had used before the first Lord Hunsdon, Sir George’s father, had become Lord Chamberlain) they toured Kent.

They also played a season at the Swan to assert their independence of Brooke and the Court. They even provoked Brooke’s enmity by staging the ‘Falstaff’ plays.

The fat knight was originally called Sir John Oldcastle, one of Brooke’s revered ancestors…

Sir John - Falstaff or Oldcastle?

Luckily for Shakespeare – and for British drama – Brooke died the following year (1597) and Sir George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon, became the Lord Chamberlain…

Sir George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon and bon viveur.

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On Christmas Day, 1600, the Court learnt that Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano was going to visit England. He would be at the Court for the Twelfth Night celebrations on 6 Janaury, 1601.

Sir George Carey realised there was no time to produce a completely new play for the occasion, so he asked his acting company to make, from their existing repertoire…

a choice of play that shall be furnished with rich apparel, have great variety and change of music and dances, and of a subject that may be most pleasing to Her Majesty…

So, as usual, William Shakespeare and his team (i.e. Thomas Nashe) tarted up an old play….

But, in the same way that Hamlet puts a political spin on The Mousetrap, so did Shakespeare and Nashe when they turned What you Will into Twelfth Night…

(It’s best to read Part One now.)