(It’s best to read Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five first).
In the early 1590’s the Southampton family was William Shakespeare’s meal-ticket…
There was no copyright on a writer’s work – so the only way a playwright could make money was by becoming a ‘sharer’ in a theatrical company….
This meant paying out a lump sum which Shakespeare did not have…
Harry, third Earl of Southampton (when he came of age in 1594) was to give Shakespeare the £1,000 (£500,000) to buy his way into the Lord Chamberlain’s Men….
But, in the meantime, he was totally dependent on Harry’s mother, Mary, Countess of Southampton….
…..who suppported Shakespeare in style….
Thomas Nashe was jealous of Shakespeare and wanted the Southampton money for himself….
But he was no threat to Shakespeare….
Small and buck-toothed…..
……he was never able to gain the affections of Mary or her son….
However, a rival poet suddenly appeared on the scene, openly wooing Harry with his verse….
He was George Chapman…..
An accomplished poet, he was a real danger to Shakespeare, who admitted he was still learning his craft…
Chapman was part of a group of free-thinking writers, philosophers and scientists, led by the ‘Wizard Earl’, Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland…..
……who was based at Petworth, thirty miles from Titchfield….
And Sir Walter Raleigh….
….who was based at Durham House in London…
The Jesuits called them the ‘School of Atheism’ and claimed that….
….both Moses and our Saviour, the Old and the New testament are jested at, and the scholars taught among other things to spell God backward…
The Jesuits, as usual, were exaggerating….
If not blatantly lying….
But the King of Navarre in Love’s Labour’s Lost also calls them ‘The School of Night’….
This was largeley because of Chapman’s philosphical verse….
He praised the cool, rational night over the hot, lustful day…
In his Hymnus in Cynthiam he casts Elizabeth as the moon-queen….
And implores her to stay isolated from the sunny glare of Europe….
That was all reasonable….
But Chapman claimed to have psychic abilities…..
When he was translating Homer’s works, the spirit of Homer appeared to him, he said….
In Hitchin…
This was all Shakespeare needed to launch an attack….
In Sonnet 86 he lampoons Chapman as being….
….by spirits taught to write…
….and even describes the spirit of Homer himself as an….
….affable familiar ghost….
Which nightly gulls him [Chapman] with intelligence….
FALSE intelligence that is!
Shakespeare then goes on to remind the devout Catholic, Southampton, that Chapman is funded by a dodgy, ‘atheist’ source…
…his compeers by night [The Wizard Earl’ and his cronies]
……who give him….
..aid…
Shakespeare’s then goes on to attack Chapman for the affectedness of his verse….
…and parodies it to devastating effect…
‘Stars’, in Chapman’s hands, become…
…those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air…
And ‘the earth’ becomes….
…..this huge rondure….’
Although he was a Catholic, Shakespeare was often very plain in his tastes…
….a legacy from his radical Protestant mentor, the priest and writer Robert Crowley at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, who hated artificial hair….
……artificial make-up…..
……and artificial language….
Shakespeare insists that he always addresses Harry….
….in true, plain words….
….because they are the only things a…
….a true-telling friend….
…..would ever use…
(Sonnet 82)
Shakespeare’s next target for attack, though, is completely unfair…..
Chapman’s name!
A ‘chapman’ in Shakespeare’s day, meant a ‘pedlar’…
So in Sonnet 102 Shakespeare asserts….
That love is merchandised , whose rich esteeming
The owner’s [Chapman’s] tongue doth publish everywhere…
And concludes Sonnet 21 with…
I will not praise [Harry] that purpose not to sell [him]…..
…..as a pedlar would!
When Shakespeare came to write Love’s Labour’s Lost, he continued the attack on Chapman by creating the monstrous, mincing, pederast, Boyet…
His very first line to his mistress, the Princess of France…
Now madam, summon up your dearest spirits….
…would instantly put the coterie Titchfield audience in mind of Chapman’s seances….
Boyet follows this with a massive, over the top, Chapmanesque compliment….
Be now as prodigal of all dear grace
As nature was in making graces dear
When she did starve the general world beside
And prodigally gave them all to you…
And if the penny still hadn’t dropped with the audience, it certainly would with the Princess’s next line…
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues…’
Later Berowne, in a vicious attack on Boyet’s plagiarism, decribes him directly as…
wits pedlar….
…who…
….retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs…
Boyet – ingratiating, lisping, effeminate – is most at home with gossipy girls….
As we see here…
And here, still in Elizabethan times…
And here, in Regency times…
And here, in Edwardian times….
Shakespeare hates him for his insincerity, his sycophancy and his smiling teeth….
…..’as white as whales’ bone….
But most of all he hates him for his….
CRUELTY TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!
His choice of words is so affected that no-one can understand a word he says…
In final exasperation, the Princess screams at him….
Avaunt, perplexity…
….and….
Speak to be understood….
…..and this introduces the most important theme in the play….
Shakespeare has attacked Chapman in his Sonnets because his language is corrupt…
If language is corrupt, then we cannot trust the feelings BEHIND the language….
They could be corrupt as well….
The integrity of language is tested to the full in Love’s Labour’s Lost when Mercade announces to the Princess the death of her father…
Can the Lords express their feelings simply and truly?
They try hard, but fail….
However, they accept the women’s challenge…
Let’s have action instead of words…
The Lords will retreat from the world and perform acts of charity for a year and a day….
Then, when they return, chastened, the ladies will give them their hearts…
Of course, we don’t know if the men keep these new promises….
They have, after all, broken their vows before….
And Berowne says, ominously, that a ‘twelvemonth’ is….……
….too long for a play….
But Shakespeare, in the ambiguity of this light comedy, is starting to work towards the conclusion of his great, dark masterpiece, King Lear….
If life is to have any meaning in the face of death, we must all….
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say….
●
With the creation of Boyet, Shakespeare faced his hatred for Chapman face on – and so faced his hatred for himself face-on….
Shakespeare had to do a lot of the things Boyet had to do – amuse, flatter, entetain and win over the ladies…
It is fascinating that Berowne/Shakespeare describes Boyet as….
honey-tongued…
Two years earlier, the poet Edmund Spenser…
……who was staying in Hampshire, compared ‘pleasant Willy’s’ verse to ‘honey’…
Deep down, Shakespeare realised that he and Chapman were very alike….
Indeed, in the play Berowne finally admires Boyet’s wit…
Well said, old mocker, I must needs be friend with thee…
This has echoes of Prospero’s final realisation in The Tempest of his kinship with the monster Caliban….
This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine…
●
Please note: some material in this post first appeared in Stewart Trotter’s Love’s Labour’s Found (2002) ISBN No. 1 873953 35 6.
(It’s best to read Part Seven now: ‘Thomas Nashe’s Revenge on Sir Walter Raleigh’!)
The Shakespeare Code 
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