The Shakespeare Code

Henry (‘Harry’) Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton…..

…….was to come of age in October, 1594.

This meant he would take possession of his money and estates, including his beloved ‘Place House’ ….

It also meant his beautiful mother, Mary, second Countess of Southampton….

….would have to get out….

Mother and son had never got on….

Mary’s husband, the second Earl of Southampton (acting on information from his servant Thomas Dymock) had accused Mary of adultery with ‘a common person’ ….

Mary had sent six year old Harry with a letter to plead her cause to her husband.

The second Earl had seized the boy, denied his wife all access and surrounded himself with….

……a whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen’…..’tall goodly fellows that kept a constant pace’…

…..and, in Mary’s words…..

……made his servant [Dymock] his wife…..

The second Earl died two years later when Harry was eight, leaving his estates, and the care of his son, to Dymock…

Mary over-turned her husband’s will,  but the damage had been done….

Harry grew up with a distaste for his mother and for women in general…..

And, like his mother and his father, had a decided preference for lower class men….

Mary now had to plan her survival….

She had starved her wayward son of funds so knew he would be reckless – and pitiless – when the family money came into his hands…

He would also face a tremendous £5,000 (£2 and a half million) fine from his guardian, Lord Burghley….

…..for refusing to marry his grand-daughter, the daughter of the Earl of Oxford.

Marriage was the answer for Mary…..

To an old family friend who had recently been made a widower – Sir Thomas Heneage…

William Camden, a contemporary historian,  writes that Henage, in his youth, had been….

……a young man of pleasant wit and bearing [who] for his elegancy of life and pleasantness of discourse [had been] born for the Court….’

When, in 1565, the Queen’s lover, Leicester…..

……had flirted with the Queen’s fiery, red-headed cousin, Lettice Knollys….

 ……Elizabeth had flirted with Heneage in revenge…

Leicester threatened to beat Heneage with a stick and Heneage challenged Leicester to a duel….

But Heneage, charming and handsome, had a knack of getting on with everyone.

By the end, even Leicester was his friend…

Heneage had been born in Copped Hall in Epping,  a hilly part of Essex…..

 

Queen Elizabeth…..

……had given Heneage the estate as a gift in 1564…

He, in return, had given Elizabeth the fabulous ‘Armada Jewel’….

…..crafted by Nicholas Hilliard.

Heneage married Mary in May, 1594, in his London, Thameside home, the Savoy Palace…

But, like all Tudor gentlemen, he much preferred living in the country where he could hunt….

So, a second ‘Midsummer’ celebration of the wedding was planned at Copped Hall…

Heneage, in his early sixties, could show off his  young bride, Mary….

Still vibrant in her early forties… 

And, of course, the magnificent grounds of his estate…

The entertainment for the event was clearly a job for cousin Will….

 Shakespeare had been part of the Southampton entourage since the defeat of the Armada….

But the commission was fraught with a number of problems…

Problem 1. Heneage was a Protestant…..

Not only a Protestant, he had been a Principal Councillor on the Committee to deal with Mary Queen of Scots in 1571….

 He had also been a member of the Privy Coucil which oversaw her execution in 1587…

Mary Southampton was a committed Catholic….

Even in the year of her wedding, she was harbouring renegade Catholic priests in her London home, Southampton House, in Holborn….

So, half of Shakespeare’s audience would be Catholic and the other half Protestant.

Problem 2. The Queen might be in the audience….

She would certainly have been invited to Copped Hall by her old favourite, Henaege…

She had visited his estate twice before.

If she attended, she would expect to be complimented in the play…..

This would infuriate the Catholics whose families had been persecuted by her Agents…

So Shakespeare would have had to find a way of complimenting Mary Queen of Scots as well…. 

She had almost achieved, for Catholics, the status of a royal saint and miraculous healing powers were said to emanate from her tomb in Peterborough Cathedral… 

And even if  the Queen, who hated weddings, didn’t see the play at Copped Hall, she was certain to see it somewhere else….

Heneage entertained the Queen at his Savoy Palace on 7 December in the same year and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed ‘several comedies or interludes’ at Greenwich Palace at Christmas…

Shakespeare was one of those who received payment for the Court performance.

This strongly suggests…

(a) That  A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed at Court and…

(b) Shakespeare had received his famous gift of £1,000 (£500,000) from Southampton as a coming of age present….

He had been able to buy a share in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men….

Problem 3. Lettice Knollys might be in the audience….

Heneage and Mary’s wedding guests would include the Gang of Four…

Mary’s son (the third Earl of Southampton) his best friend (the second Earl of Essex) Essex’s sister ( Penelope Rich) and Penelope’s lover, Lord Mountjoy…..

With the Essex family so well represented at the celebration, Essex’s mother Lettice, née Knollys, would have to be asked as well….

And complimented in the play….

She and the Queen, though, were deadly enemies….

Problem 4. The need for ‘closure’ on Mary Southampton’s first marriage….

The second Earl of Southampton had gone to his grave hating his wife….

He had even specified in his will that he should be buried in a single tomb as an eternal rebuke to her….

A wish that Mary had ignored….

Shakespeare, as a Catholic, would have been aware of the ‘perturbed’ spirit of the second Earl…..

He would also know that the spiritual conflict of the old marriage would need to be resolved before a blessing could be given to the new…

Problem 5. The pressure on Shakespeare to collaborate with Thomas Kyd….

Shakespeare had shacked up – and collaborated – with Sporting Kyd, a fellow grammar school boy six years his senior, when he first came to London….

Now the Countess of Pembroke…..

 ….and her teenage son, William, were strongly urging Shakespeare to resume the collaboration with Kyd, sick and down on his luck….

For reasons The Shakespeare Code will reveal in this new series of posts, Shakespeare had no wish to resume a partnership with Kyd…

In fact, he wanted to destroy him….

Shakespeare worked instead with the diminutive, beardless Thomas Nashe….

…..who, in the entertainment, sent up Shakespeare SKY HIGH!!!

Problem 6. The dreadful summer of 1594….

Not even Shakespeare could do anything about this….

He knew his clients wanted a ‘promenade’ production of the play – just like the entertainments they had staged in their grounds for Queen Elizabeth’s Progresses…

And as Love’s Labour’s Found had been staged in Titchfield….

Everyone had to wait for the weather to change, so Midsummer Night was a little late that year…

The Paraclesian doctor and astrologer, Simon Forman….

…….tells us that…

June and July [1594] were very wet and wonderful cold like winter, that the 10th day of July many did sit by the fire it was so cold. And so it was in May and June…

However, the antiquarian and tailor, John Stow…..

……tells us that the weather rallied in August…

So August it was when the wedding guests of the Heneages made their way to Epping….

Shakespeare, as we shall see, solved all the above problems with the strongest weapon at his disposal….

His verse….

As we shall see, even the bad weather made its way, gloriously, into his poetry…

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(Please now read ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Decoded. Part Two. The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth. )