The Shakespeare Code

 

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code….

…..William Shakespeare’s Sonnets are the greatest poems known to Man…

…..or Cat….

(Well, in English, anyway….)

But they are written in LANGUAGE of ENORMOUS COMPLEXITY…

Because Shakespeare lived in TIMES of ENORMOUSLY COMPLEXITY….

It is the UTTER CONVICTION of The Shakespeare Code that…..

You CANNOT understand SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS without understanding SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE….

To that end, Your Cat now offers you….

 TRIXIE’S BACKGROUND JOTTINGS!!!

 A lightning tour of all you need to know….

To be IN the know….

About SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS…..

So, fasten your seat belts..….

●

 Queen Elizabeth…..

….also known as ‘The Moon’…

….was six years into her reign when William Shakespeare was born.

Elizabeth’s step-mother, Katherine Parr….

….had encouraged the young Princess to adopt the Protestant views of John Calvin….

So when Elizabeth became Queen, she was determined to rid England of ‘superstitious’ Roman Catholicism….

William Shakespeare, however, was born into a deeply Papist family…..

On his mother Mary’s side were the Ardens…..

One of the oldest, noblest, Catholic families in the land…

And his father, John….

……though of yeoman stock and unable to write…..

… ..put his sign on a Roman Catholic Testament of Faith that could have led to his death.

Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester….

…also known as ‘The Bear’….

…the most ferocious of beasts in the eyes of the Elizabethans…

…was Queen Elizabeth’s lover.

He had murdered and slept his way to the top….

…but had the audacity to proclaim himself the leader of the English Puritans…

He rebuilt KenilworthCastle…..

…..not half a day’s ride from Stratford-upon-Avon…

….and used it as the centre for his intrigues…

….sexual and political….

(He even stopped all the clocks whenever Queen Elizabeth came to call so The Bear and The Moon, undistracted by Time, could devote themselves to pleasure…)

The strait-laced Ardens were outraged….

Edward Arden, the Sheriff of Warwickshire….

…..refused to wear Leicester’s livery….

…..would not sell him any land….

…..denounced him as an adulterer and murderer…

…..and declined his invitation to attend a Kenilworth entertainment for the Queen…

So Leicester had Edward Arden hanged drawn and quartered….

….ostensibly for keeping a Catholic priest on his payroll….

The young William Shakespeare also clashed with one of Leicester’s agents….

….the sadistic Sir Thomas Lucy…..

….licensed to hunt down Catholics and destroy them…

Shakespeare poached hares and deer from Lucy’s estate as a Papist revenge…

Sir Thomas whipped him savagely and imprisoned him….

……so the lad was sent away, for his own safety, to Lancashire…..

….to an old Catholic family at Hoghton Hall….

 

……where he learnt to make himself indispensable…

 ….as a factotum, entertainer…

…. and generally nice person to have around.

But the Hoghton family in turn was persecuted for its faith….

….so Shakespeare had to return to Stratford….

…..where he wooed Anne Hathaway….

……a woman ten years his senior….

…..with a ballad that played on her family name…..

I hate from hate away she threw,

And saved my life, saying ‘not you’.

Shakespeare impregnated her….

…..but did the decent thing and married her….

He then returned to his attack on Sir Thomas…..

This time he wrote an obscene ballad abut him….

…….playing on his family name…..

Lucy is lousy….

Shakespeare performed it all over Stratford….

…..then stuck the lyrics on Sir Thomas’s gates….

Shakespeare had to get out of town….

…..so he fled to London…..

…. and shacked up with another ‘grammar school’ boy, ‘Sporting’ Thomas Kyd…..

Together they worked on pamphlets and plays…..

….and befriended the gay, louche, Cambridge graduate, Christopher Marlowe…

But two other university ‘wits’….

….Robert Greene….

…and Thomas Nashe….

…..made coded attacks on Shakespeare and Kyd in their own pamphlets and plays…

…..turning them into animals……

Kyd became the ‘kid’ in Aesop……

……and Shakespeare, famously, an….

upstart crow….

Greene and Nashe were deeply offended that mere ‘grammarians’ should set themselves up as writers….

As an M.P., Lucy was often in London…

To gain protection from him, Shakespeare cultivated the friendship of Robert Crowley…..

…..the radical Protestant vicar in charge of St. Giles’, Cripplegate….

…..where Sir Thomas worshipped….

Crowley believed in voluntary re-distribution of wealth…..

…..hated all affectation in language and behaviour…..

…..and loathed women who wore wigs and make-up….

…..even the Queen….

Crowley wrote and printed ballads to popularise Christianity…

…..and encouraged Shakespeare to write plays….

…. based on Biblical stories and Moralities….

Shakespeare set up his own acting company…

….and then toured the Midlands…..

But audiences got tired of this homely fare…..

…..and when the Spanish Armada attacked England…..

……there were no jobs in the theatre for anyone anyway.

Actors were despised as unmanly…

……. and unpatriotic.

Audeiences ripped the costumes off the actors’ backs to give to soldiers and sailors…

Christopher Marlowe joined Bess of Hardwick’s household as a tutor….

…..Thomas Kyd joined Lord Strange…..

…..and William Shakespeare joined the deeply Roman Catholic Southampton household in Titchfield….

….. in 1590…..

This was the year the young Third Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley…..

…..pronounced ‘Ryosley’….

…..but known  as ‘Harry Southampton….

….reached the age of 17.

Harry’s father was dead….

….so Harry was the ward of Lord Burghley….

…..Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State….

…..nick-named ‘Old Saturnus’….

Burghley wanted Harry to marry his grand-daughter, Lady Elizabeth de Vere…..

…..the oldest daughter of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford….

But Harry much preferred male company….

When Harry was six years old, his father, the 2nd Earl of Southampton, had accused his mother, Mary, 2nd Countess of Southampton….

….of adultery with ‘a common person’….

The 2nd Earl had snatched Harry away from his mother……

…..surrounded him with all-male company…..

….and proceeded to make his male servant….

….his wife…..

Two years later, the 2nd Earl died….

But by then Harry had been taught to hate all women…..

And his mother in particular…

….(who was distantly related to Shakespeare’s own mother)…

The Countess was now putting pressure on Harry to carry out Lord Burghley’s wishes…..

….as was her father, Sir Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague….

….one of England’s leading Roman Catholics…..

….and whose title Shakespeare was to use in Romeo and Juliet…

Lord Montague was an intimate friend of King Philip II of Spain…

Burghley had the legal right to insist that Harry marry a woman of his choice….

…..and was about to impose on the Southampton family a £5,000 fine….

….. £2-and-a-half million in our money.

So Shakespeare was given the job of writing seventeen Sonnets for Harry’s seventeenth birthday…..

…….to persuade him to marry and have a son….

The 14 line Sonnet form…..

…..(Sonnet means ‘little song’)….

……with its three quartrains of four lines……

….. and its concluding couplet of two lines…..

…..and its ‘volte’…..

…..its sudden change of mood or subject….

…… had been introduced from Italy early in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Elder…

…and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey….

Sir Philip Sidney…..

….the soldier, courtier and poet…

….had developed the Sonnet form at nearby Wilton….

In the 1580’s he had written a Sonnet sequence,  Astrophil and Stella, about his love for the married beauty, Lady Penelope Rich….

….the sister of Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex…

….and had played on her married name, claiming she was….

……Rich in all beauties…..

And had only one misfortune…..

……that Rich she is…..

i.e. , married to Mr. Rich….

Samuel Daniel…..

….also based at Wilton, wrote his Delia Sonnet sequence, in praise of his employer, Sir Philip Sidney’s sister, Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke…

In his Birthday Sonnets to Harry, Shakespeare calls him his….

rose…..

…….playing on  his family name……

…..Wriothesley/Ryosley….

…….but he failed to persuade Harry to marry…..

However,  he stayed in Titchfield as tutor and companion to Harry…..

…..and as schoolmaster to the local boys….

He became acquainted with Harry’s aristocratic friends….

…Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex….

…who was the Queen’s current lover….

….Charles Blount, pronounced ‘Blunt’, later 8^th Baron Mountjoy……

….who had been the Queen’s former lover….

(Elizabeth had ‘picked him up’ when he was a teenager)

….and Roger Manners, 5^th Earl of Rutland….

….who, it seems, was never a lover of anyone at all…

….well, not of women anyway…..

He never consummated his marriage with his wife…

Shakespeare couples the married name of Penelope Rich with the family name of Lord Mountjoy (Blount/Blunt)….

So am I as the rich whose blessed key

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,

The which he will not ev’ry hour survey

For blunting the fine edage of seldom pleasure….

And the family name of the Earl of Rutland (Manners)….

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,

While comments of your praise richly complied…

Shakespeare went on to write more Sonnets to Harry……

…..using them to send up Harry’s guardian, Lord Burghley (‘Old Saturnus’)…..

…..who, gout-ridden, walked slowly and painfully with the aid of a stick….

From you I have been absent in the spring,

When proud pied April (drest in all his train)

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him….

Shakespeare also uses the Sonnets to praise Harry’s beauty….

……which, unlike women’s, has been…..

…..with Nature’s own hand painted…..

Shakespeare promises Harry immortality through his verse…

And all in war with Time for love of you [Harry]

As he takes from thee, I engraft you new…

But though Harry wanted an affair with Shakespeare….

….(like his mother Mary, he had a taste for lower class men)…

….Shakespeare warded off Harry’s advances….

But since she [Dame Nature] prickt thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure….

A liaison with Harry had never been part of his job description…..

And he didn’t want to offend mother Mary.

‘The Resolute’ John Florio…..

…..the translator of Montaigne and compiler of an Italian/English dictionary….

…..soon replaced Shakespeare as schoolmaster….

…..and became Harry’s Italian tutor….

‘Old Saturnus’ placed Florio in Titchfield to spy on the Southamptons….

……and to monitor their recusant activities…..

Mary, Countess of Southampton….

……with her old family friend, the schoolmaster Swithin Wells….

……later to be made a Saint…..

……would recruit ardent young Catholics….

……like Edmund Gennings….

…..(also later to be made a Saint)….

…..send them to the Continent of Europe to be trained as priests……

…..then bring them back to England…..

….. to suffer death as Catholic martyrs…

Gennings, on his return, was arrested for saying a Latin mass….

The authorities dressed him up in a fool’s outfit…..

….. which had been found in Wells’s house….

……then hanged, drew and quartered him in 1591….

This was the year Queen Elizabeth visited Titchfield….

In her entourage was the beautiful, dark-skinned Jewess, Emilia Bassano…..

…..the mistress of the Queen’s randy old cousin, Henry, Lord Hunsdon….

…..and a professional musician…

….who played the clavichord…..

Her family had originated in Morocco….

…..(her nick-name was ‘The Moor’)…

…. and had lived in Venice as musicians to The Doge….

Emilia stayed on at Titchfield because a plague was raging in London

Shakespeare fell in love with her….

He decided that ‘Black was Beautiful’…

……and set out, in his Sonnets and plays, to prove it….

He particularly liked the fact that Emilia with…..

black wires

….on her head and a dark skin needed no wigs or make-up….

Shakespeare then wrote Love’s Labour’s Lost to satirise Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Hampshire….

And performed it with a Pro-Am cast…..

……including women…..

……in a private performance, at Titchfield…

He sent up Florio as the pedantic schoolmaster, Holofernes…

…..Sir Walter Raleigh….

…as the sonneteering Spanish braggart, Don Armado….

Shakespeare also plays on the Walter/Water sound similarity in the Sonnets….

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love….

(Sir Walter had a thick Devon accent all his life: and Queen Elizabeth used to send him up by saying ‘I thirst for Water…..’)

Shakespeare sends up George Chapman…..

….as the gossipy, grinning, lisping, effeminate sycophant, Boyet….

He even uses Chapman’s name……

The Princess of France says:

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.

Beauty is bought by judement of the eye,

Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues…..

Both Raleigh and Chapman were friends of the Wizard Earl…..

….Henry Percy, 9^th Earl of Northumberland, who lived at nearby Petworth…

The Petworth ‘set’ was attacked by the Jesuits as ‘The School of Atheism’….

And by Shakespeare as ‘The School of Night’…

….Chapman even claimed to have raised the spirit of Homer, an….

….affable, familiar ghost….

….to help him translate his verse…

Shakespeare cast Emilia as the dark-skinned Rosaline…..

…..and then proceeded to woo her, very publicly, in the character of Berowne…

…..a play on Countess Mary’s family name, ‘Browne’.

Penelope Rich played the Princess of France….

….and Shakespeare played on her married name ‘Rich’…..

….. as Sidney had done in his Sonnet sequence…

Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart….

(The word ‘rich’ appears FIVE more times in the same scene….)

Emilia, though, played hard to get….

So Shakespeare asked Harry to plead his love-suit for him….

Emilia seized her chance….

She seduced Harry….

….and Harry allowed himself to be seduced….

….in order to hurt Shakespeare…

Shakespeare was forced to admit that he was more in love with Harry than he was with Emilia….

He left Titchfield and went on tour again…..

…..but continued his Sonnet correspondence with Harry…

…..and finally, in the great Sonnet…….

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…..

 ………told him that he loved him…

Emilia became pregnant…..

……converted to Chrisitanity….

…. and was married off to a ‘minstrel’ called Lanier ‘for colour’.

Shakespeare makes two  joking references to ‘The Moor’s’ pregnancy in The Merchant of Venice…

Lorenzo says…..

I shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you can the getting up of the negro’s belly: the Moor is by child with you Launcelot.

….and Launcelot Gobbo says….

It is much that the Moor should be more than reason: But if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I took her for….

Shakespeare uses a variation of her name ‘Bassano’ in the same play as ‘Bassanio’…..

And in Titus Andronicus invents two characters called ‘Aemelius’ and ‘Bassianus….’

In Titus Shakespeare also plays on Burghley’s nick-name, Old Saturnus, by naming a character ‘Saturninus’.

He plays the same trick in the Sonnets:

From you [Harry] I have been absent in the spring

When proud, pied April (drest in all his trim)

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:

That heavy Saturn  laught and lept with him

(The gout-ridden Burghley walked slowly and painfully with the aid of a stick: sometimes he was carried round in a chair….)

Shakespeare returned to Titchfield…..

…..and, with the Countess’s blessing,…

…..began an affair with Harry that was to last sixteen years…..

There were to be infidelities on both sides….

…..and Shakespeare worried about Harry’s taste for lower class men….

He thought, correctly, that it would be used against him….

But why thy odour matcheth not thy show

The soil is this, that thou doth common grow…

But the relationship was strong enough to resist advances on Harry from George Chapman….

……the so-called ‘rival poet’….

Chapman wanted to replace Shakespeare in Harry’s affections….

…..and payroll.

(Harry was to give Shakespeare a gift of £1,000 – £500,000 in our money)

Sometimes Shakespeare’s bisexual orientation distressed him – as it distresses Antonio in The Merchant of Venice who describes himself as….

the tainted wether of the flock….

And Shakespeare, in his own voice in the Sonnets, writes:

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate….

But at other times Shakespeare positively exults in his sexuality:

I am that I am and those that level at my abuses

Reckon up their own…

Harry and Shakespeare visited Europe, in secret, in 1593…..

…..as amateur spies for the Earl of Essex…

They travelled to Madrid to visit King Philip II of Spain……

Here Shakespeare saw Titian’s paintings Venus and Adonis….

…..and The Rape of Lucrece…

…..which inspired him to write his two narrative poems…

….and even to use the same perspectives and colours in his verse as Titian does in his paintings…

Harry and Shakespeare also visited ‘The Eternal City’,  Rome….

….where they saw the famous obelisk that Pope Sextus V had placed in front of St. Peter’s Basilica seven years before….

It was a holy object to Catholics….

…..the last thing St. Peter saw before he was crucified in Rome….

Harry and Shakespeare also saw the famous gilt orb which had been on the top of the obelisk….

…..once rumoured to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar….

….and which had been shot at and damaged by Protestants during the ‘Sack of Rome’ in 1527…

….brass eternal slave to mortal rage….

Harry and Shakespeare returned to England…

 They found that Marlowe had been killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford….

….and Kyd tortured by the State on suspicion of atheism…

Harry came of age…..

So Countess Mary had to leave Titchfield….

…..(she and Harry had never got on)…

….and married Sir Thomas Heneage….

….yet another of the Queen’s old lovers…

Mary commissioned Shakespeare to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream to celebrate the marriage….

…which was performed at Copped Hall in Essex…

The long-legged Penelope Rich played Helena….

…..and Emilia Bassano/Lanier, the dark-skinned little minx, Hermia….

The love triangle with Harry, Shakespeare and Emilia, started all over again….

…..with Emilia’s….

….bed-vow [marriage-vow] broke and new faith [Christianity] torn….

Suddenly, though, Hamnet, Shakespeare’s eleven year old son, died….

Shakespeare……

Made lame by fortune’s dearest spite…..

….. went right off the rails…

He drank, he gambled, he visited prostitutes…

He was even bound over by a London magistrate to keep the peace….

…..a scandal so great that, for a time, Shakespeare had to avoid Harry’s company…

But in the end, Harry became Shakespeare’s surrogate son…

And then surprised everyone…..

 He fell in love with the Earl of Essex’s cousin, the lovely Elizabeth Vernon….

….one of Queen Elizabeth’s Ladies-in-waiting…

Shakespeare, though he favoured the marriage…

….(he was, after all, married himself with children)….

….was worried that, though he would love Harry to the end of time he might be side-lined in Harry’s affections…

Love is not love which alters

When it alteration finds…

But his affair with Harry continued unabated….

….even after Elizabeth  had a little baby girl….

But The Queen was furious….

She had not been consulted about the marriage…

And she was notoriously jealous of her young Ladies -in-Waiting

Shakespeare anticipated ‘The Moon’s’ fury in Romeo and Juliet….

But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?

It is the East and Juliet is the sun!

Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon

Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou her maid art far more fair than she…..

Harry was out of favour with the Queen….

….and Elizabeth was also growing tired of Essex…

Essex and Harry formed a plot to topple Elizabeth….

….or at least force her to name her successor as King James VI of Scotland…

Shakespeare, initially, was in favour of this plan…

He wanted tolerance for Catholics…

….and, like everyone else……

….was worried civil war would break out at Elizabeth’s death…

Essex was sent to quell the rebellion in Ireland…

…. but the Irish, led by the canny rebel, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone….

….ran circles round Essex.

He rushed back to England, deserting his post….

….and, more important, rushed into Elizabeth’s bed-chamber….

….before she had time to put on her make-up…

… and before she had time to put on her wig….

Essex was finished…

…a pitiful thriver in [his] gazing spent….

And Shakespeare knew this…

But Essex and Southampton were determined to go ahead with their rebellion…

They put on a performance of Richard II to give themselves heart….

…..then rushed into the streets of London to rouse the citizens….

The citizens didn’t want to know….

Essex was beheaded and Southampton was locked in the Tower….

Shakespeare, once more, had to get out of town….

He left London, thinking he would never see Harry again…

However, two years later….

The mortal moon…..her eclipse endured….

Queen Elizabeth died….

King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England….

….and everything turned round.

Harry became a hero…

…..and hoped to be the new favourite of the King…

He commissioned a painting of himself to be sent to James….

…accompanied by two Sonnets by Shakespeare….

Shakespeare became a Groom of the Chamber….

…..and, dressed in red livery,….

…..held the canopy over James during his coronation…

…..an honour he thought worth nothing compared to his love for Harry…

The coronation route was lined with wooden obelisks….

….which reminded Shakespeare of the obelisk at Rome….

No! Time thous shalt not boast that I do change;

Thy pyramids [obelisks] built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight….

But St. Peter’s obelisk was constructed of stone….

 …which, in its strength and permanence…..

….symbolised Shakespeare’s love for Harry…

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drown with showers…

Shakespeare calls on…..

….. the fools of time……

……all the Catholic martyrs, like Edmund Gennings in his jester’s coat…

……to witness the validity of his love for Harry….

Shakespeare had profound respect for Catholicism…..

…. and employed religious imagery in describing his love….

….but he could never become a religious himself….

…..he was too attached to life…

Harry did not become James’s favourite…

King James  preferred younger, prettier men…

Harry, shut out from power, started to become homophobic…

Then his wife had a baby boy, James….

….who would need a manly father to look up to….

….not one in a relationship with an actor…

Shakespeare…..

….withering 

……as fast as little baby James (Harry’s ‘sweet self’ ) was growing…

…..had to go.

Shakespeare’s life and work entered its darkest phase

His grief for Hamnet came flooding back.

Now he had lost TWO sons…

He had promised immortality to Southampton….

….now he promised him the certainty of death….

Dame Nature’s audit….

….though delayed, answered must be.

And her Quietus [settlement] is to render thee….

Shakespeare took his revenge by publishing all his Sonnets…

…..dedicated to ‘Mr. W. H.’…..

….. code for ‘Mr. H. W’…..

…..’Mr. Henry Wriothesley’….

…..so the whole world would know the intimate details of his affair with Harry.

But even at this stage, Shakespeare was starting to take a more positive view of events….

With the Sonnets he published A Lover’s Complaint

A  young woman…..

…..i.e. Shakespeare….

….has been mistreated by a psychotic lover….

…..i.e Harry…..

But in the end she decideds that the whole experience has been so sublime…..

…..SHE WOULD GO THROUGH THE WHOLE AFFAIR AGAIN!!!

Besides, Shakespeare had already begun another liaison…..

But that, Brothers and Sisters of The Code…..

……is another story…..

‘Bye, now…..

If you were interested in Trixie’s Post, you might also be interested in: Why did William Shakespeare write the Sonnets?

and: The Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded.

and: Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets (2) The Birthday Sonnets.