By Trixie….
…your own Theatre Cat…
Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code,
….Your Cat has been prowling the West End again….
….and has come up trumps!
She has seen William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar …
…..at the DIVINE Noël Coward Theatre, St. Martin’s Lane…
….directed by the DIVINE Greg Doran…..
(See Mr. Doran’s Celebrity Endorsement)
Julius Caesar is the all-time political play…
And Greg D. gets to the heart of it!
He sets the play in modern-day AFRICA…..
…..where the power struggles, bloodletting and naked superstition….
……mirror Elizabethan life EXACTLY!!!
It’s impossible to watch this brilliant production without thinking about ‘modern politics’….
But that’s partly because Shakespeare was thinking about ‘modern politics’ himself….
But what were ‘modern politics’ for Shakespeare?
Your Cat will reveal ALL….
●
We know EXACTLY when Julius Caesar was first performed – and we can thank Switzerland for that….
A Swiss tourist, visiting London, saw Julius Caesar on September 21st, 1599 at ‘about 2 o’clock’.
He reports that there were fifteen in the cast, the production was ‘excellent’ and culminated in ‘a most elegant and curious dance’ performed by four men….
……two of them in drag…
Nothing changes in Southwark…
So, what was happening in September, 1599?
EVERYTHING!
At the end of March, 1599, the Queen had sent her young favourite, the Earl of Essex…..
…..to Ireland to quell the rebellion led by the foxy Hugh O’Neil, the Earl of Tyrone….
As Essex left , there was thunder on a clear day followed by a shower of rain…
Essex was then tossed to and fro as he crossed the Irish Channel….
All of which were seen as omens…
The secret plan of the Essex/Southampton entourage was…..
1. Essex would have a military triumph in Ireland…
2. ….then return to Wales at the head of his English/Irish army….
3. …..then join up with King James of Scotland at the head of his Scottish army
4. ……then march on London…..
5. ….. then persuade Queen Elizabeth to name King James as her successor….
This, it was thought, would prevent Civil War from breaking out when Queen Elizabeth died.
Essex, of course, would take the opportunity of the uprising to ‘prick’ his enemies….
….people like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Cobham and the Earl of Nottingham….
Charles Blount, the eighth Baron Mountjoy – another of Queen Elizabeth’s dishy ‘toy-boys’….
….was in on the act….
He was the lover of the Earl of Essex’s sister, Penelope Rich.
But Blount was loyal to Elizabeth – who had literally ‘picked him up’ when he was a teenager – and didn’t want to go so far as to topple Elizabeth from her throne…
(‘Blount’ was pronounced ‘Blunt’, just like James ‘You’re Beautiful’ Blount/Blunt….
….the high-falsetto soldier-singer….)
William Shakespeare, as Southampton’s intimate friend, was in on the act as well…
He backed the succession of King James because of his promise of tolerance to Catholics…..
Not to mention homosexuals….
In 1599 he wrote Henry V to celebrate Essex’s departure to Ireland…..
One of the play’s Choruses invites the citizens of London to greet Essex and his army on their return to Blackheath….
In readiness for the Great Rebellion….
(See: Shakespeare: The Movie II)
Shakespeare also travelled to Scotland in 1599 to write and stage Macbeth…..
The purpose of the play was to show King James that Destiny was offering him the throne of England…..
…..and that he had a MORAL OBLIGATION to remove Elizabeth….
Like the Macbeths…….
……Elizabeth had usurped the throne from its rightful owner, James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots….
……and had killed her…..
(See: Shakespeare in Scotland).
But in Ireland, everything went wrong….
Essex infuriated Elizabeth by making Southampton his General of Horse….
…….by delaying his confrontation with Tyrone
…….and by creating dozens of knights….
The Irish themselves were running circles round him….
….and Tyrone even suggested that the two of them should join up and fight Elizabeth together!
Sick, sad and lonely, Essex took consolation in the love of his Irish pageboy, Henry Tracey, who worked as his courier to England…
Indeed, this love was so strong, William Camden, a contemporary historian, even mentions it in his official account of the times…
On 30th August Essex sent Henry with a letter to the Queen which read:
From a mind delighting in sorrow; from spirits wasted with travail, care and grief; from a heart torn in pieces with passion; from a man that hates himself and all things that keep him alive, what service can Your Majesty possibly reap….
Essex had decided the time had come to invade England…
Southampton advised against….
And for Shakespeare, too, the penny had finally dropped….
Essex was too honourable, too intellectual, too romantic….
….and finally too dim….
….to lead a successful rebellion against the Queen.
But one of Essex’s ‘spin-doctors’ was still advocating a military attack on England….
…..Henry Cuffe, a low born, cynical, ex-academic and crook, who spent his time ransacking the Classics to make political points to the Earls of Essex and Southampton….
…..and ripping off any army officer who sought to buy his influence….
What could Shakespeare do to counteract influence of the ‘churlish philosopher’ Cuffe?
He could write a play….
He could write Julius Caesar…
●
It is the firm belief of The Shakespeare Code that Julius Caesar is an attempt to warn Essex of the dire consequences of rebelling against Elizabeth….
Essex is the noble, but naïve and unworldly Brutus, who genuinely believes that he found….
…..no man but he was true to me…
…..and who takes consolation in his love for his page-boy, Lucius…
Cuffe is the ‘lean and hungry’ war-profiteer, Cassius, who seldom smiles….
…..and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself, and scorn’d his spirit
That could be mov’d to smile at anything….
……and who activates the dark side of Brutus/Essex and pushes him to his ruin…
Elizabeth is Caesar – ‘the sick girl’ – who, like the English Queen, constantly vacillates, is subject to fits….
….but who believes he is ……
…..constant as the northern star….
(Elizabeth’s motto was ‘Semper Eadem’ – always the same….)
Even Cassius’s famous description of Caesar…..
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves…
….is coded reference to Queen Elizabeth.
In the Ditchley portrait of the Queen….
….she ‘bestrides’ Oxford and the Home Counties….
(Shakespeare had already made a reference to this portrait in Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Berowne says:
O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,
Her feet were much too dainty for such tread.
And Dumaine replies:
O vile! Then, as she goes, what upward lies
The street should see as she walked overhead….)
Shakespeare believed that if the rebellion were to succeed – and if Elizabeth were to be assassinated – warfare would break out among the conspirators…..
…..and that…..
….domestic fury and fierce civil strife
shall cumber all the parts…..
….. of England….
Mountjoy, who maintained his love for the Queen (she called him her ‘kitchen-maid’!) would soon have been at daggers-drawn with Essex….
…..as Mark Anthony is with Brutus…
It is the firm belief The Shakespeare Code….
….and Trixie the Cat…..
….that Mark Anthony is Charles Blount, eighth Lord Mountjoy….
Like bon viveur Anthony, who loves wine, women and plays….
……Mountjoy….
For his diet….used to fare plentifully and of the best, so as no Lord in England might compare with him in that kind of bounty….He fed plentifully both at dinner and supper, having the choicest and most nourishing meats, with the best wines, which he drank plentifully….He loved private retiredness, good fare and some few friends. He delighted in study….in playing at shovel-board or at cards; in reading play-books for recreation….In his love to women, he was faithful and constant……
Thus wrote Fynes Moryson – Mountjoy’s secretary. But what he doesn’t mention is a less comfortable quality Mountjoy shares with the Antony of Julius Caesar – an iron, ruthless, manipulative will….
Mountjoy was to go on to decimate Ireland….
All these coded references would have been instantly picked up by the Essex and Southampton entourage…..
……but Shakespeare was always pushing the envelope….
He makes a coded reference to Mountjoy’s family name in the play itself…..
Sir Philip Sidney started this custom in his Sonnet Sequence Astrophil and Stella.
In Sonnet 37, he plays on the married surname of the Earl of Essex’s sister, Penelope Rich….
Rich in the treasure of deserv’d renown,
Rich in the riches of a royal heart,
Rich in those gifts which give th’eternal crown;
Who though most rich in these and every part,
Which make the patents of true worldly bliss,
Hath no misfortune, but that Rich she is….
It is the firm belief of The Shakespeare Code that Penelope Rich played the Princess of France in the first performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost at Titchfield…..
…..and that Shakespeare plays on her name in an identical way.
In the last scene of the play, the Princess says….
Sweet hearts we shall be rich ’ere we depart….
And the word ‘rich’ is mentioned FIVE MORE TIMES in the same scene…
(See: Love’s Labour’s Found by Stewart Trotter)
In Sonnet 52, Shakespeare plays on the family names of both Penelope and her lover, Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy….
So am I as the rich whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure….
Samuel Johnson said that Shakespeare would sacrifice EVERYTHING for the sake of….
…a quibble…
And we see Shakespeare doing that very thing in Julius Caesar…..
And at the height of his funeral oration over the body of Caesar, Mark Antony/ Charles Blount says….
I am no orator as Brutus is
But as ye know me all a plain blunt man…
‘Bye now….
Pawnote:
William Shakespeare also plays on Penelope Rich’s family name with the family name of another of the Essex/Southampton entourage….
Step forward, Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland….
Manners was the great, younger, Cambridge friend of the Earl of Southampton……
He famously never consummated his marriage……
Some say he damaged his manhood on a Continental tour….
Some imply other….
Be that is it may, Sonnet 85 begins…
My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still
While comments of your praise, richly compiled
Reserve your character with golden quill….
‘Bye, again….
The Shakespeare Code 
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