The Shakespeare Code

by

TRIXIE THE CAT

 

……along with the mysterious ‘Thomas X’…….

(To find out more about ‘Tom’s’ involvement with Trixie the Cat, please click: HERE. )

So, if Kit Marlowe…….

….WASN’T the Rival Poet……

(See: Was Christopher Marlowe the Rival Poet?)

……then WHO WAS?

YOUR CAT WILL REVEAL ALL !!!

First, let’s look at the Sonnets themselves…..

…….Sonnets in which Shakespeare does EVERYTHING HE CAN to destroy the character of his Rival…

…..but which, to be effective, must contain an element of truth…..

(The Code has learnt much about Shakespeare  by analysing the attacks on him made by his enemies….)

In Sonnet 83 Shakespeare refers to…..

….the barren tender of a [Rival]Poet’s debt….. 

……implying that The Rival was hard up……

…..and so in need of Southampton’s Patronage…..

Shakespeare also implies, in Sonnets 21 and 23, that The Rival Poet was gay….

The Rival praises Harry’s beauty with his verse…

……And every fair with his [Harry’s] fair doth rehearse……

……..and also praises Harry’s beauty with HIS TONGUE…..

…….that more hath more expressed…..

i.e. that has praised Harry more fulsomely, and more often, than Shakespeare has done….

But with the mention of ‘tongue’ comes the wicked suggestion that The Rival has also been ‘expressing’ his love in decidely non-verbal ways….

Shakespeare admits, in Sonnet 78, that The Rival is better educated than he is……

…….and presents this as a shortcoming….

…….NOT, however, as a shortcoming on Shakespeare’s part…..

……but on THE RIVAL’S!

Shakespeare argues that Harry, by consenting to be The Rival’s ‘Muse’…..

……i.e. his source of inspiration….

…….. has simply…..

…added feathers to the learned’s wing….

i.e. he has only slightly enhanced a talent that was already there…..

Shakespeare, on the other hand knew NOTHING before Harry came on the scene…..

…….consequently Harry is…..

….all [Shakespeare’s] art and dost advance,

As high as learning [Shakespeare’s] rude ignorance…. [Sonnet 78]

Shakespeare even goes on to ATTACK The Rival Poet’s erudition….

It makes his writing artificial, overblown and  insincere…..

The Rival will…..

……make a couplement [comparison] of proud compare….

…..between Harry……

…..With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems;

With April’s first-born flowers and all things rare……

The sky, in The Rival’s pedantic hands, becomes….

…..heaven’s air……

……the earth a….

…..huge rondure

………and the stars….

…..gold candles fixed in heaven’s air..

These are, Shakespeare claims…..

…..strainéd touches….

…….which contrast unfavourably with Shakespeare’s……

…..true, plain words…[Sonnet 82]

……which serve…..

……to witness duty not to show [his] wit…[Sonnet 26]

Shakespeare admits he will sometimes be ‘dumb’ in Harry’s presence…..

…..but this silent devotion has much more integrity than The Rival’s…..

….breath of words…..[Sonnet 85]

……. in the same way that Cordelia’s great love for her father, King Lear…….

…….expressed in deeds rather than language….

……. is far superior to her wicked sisters’…..

…..glib and oily art….

To speak and purpose not….

Shakespeare claims that he….

……thinks good thoughts while others write good words….

….and demonstrates his love for Harry by WHAT HE DOES…..

Harry’s beauty, Shakespeare insists, is so sublime it CANNOT be captured by…..

…..a modern quill…..

Anyone who DOES dare to write about him is obliged to…..

…….bring forth

Eternal numbers to outlive long date…

i.e. write poetry which will last for ever….

….which Shakespeare claims he himself has done in the famous…..

……Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?…….

……Sonnet 18 in which he predicts…..

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this [Sonnet] and this gives life to thee….[Harry]

Shakespeare goes on to describe his Rival as a ship…..

of proudest sail…..

and…..

…of tall building and of goodly pride….

……while Shakespeaere is…..

…..a worthless boat…..

that…..

…..doth willfully [Will-fully] appear…..

…….on Harry’s……

…..broad main…

Shakespeare is admitting his Rival is more famous than he is….

But his praise is not entirely ingenuous…..

As a much bigger ship, The Rival displaces more water on Harry’s…..

……soundless deep….

….while Harry’s….…

….shallowest help will hold [Shakespeare] up afloat…..

i.e.The Rival, because of his celebrity status will be much more expensive for Harry to maintain than Shakespeare…..

…….who is cheap as chips.

Shakespeare also fires a warning shot……

If Harry ditches Shakespeare for a new, more loquacious lover……

…….the world will condemn Harry for being…..

…..fond on praise…..

So, we learn from Shakespeare’s attacks on the Rival Poet that he….

1. Needs a lot of money….

2. Wants to be Harry’s lover…..

3. Is adept at flattery….

4. Uses language in an affected way, and…..

5. Has an established reputation…..

This could be any any number of people in Queen Elizabeth’s England….

HOWEVER,  in Sonnet 86 we learn something EXTRAORDINARILY IDIOSYNCRATIC about The Rival…..

HE TALKS TO GHOSTS!!!

…..or rather, one particular…..

…..affable, familiar ghost……

i.e. a friendly spook…..

 

…….who…….

…….nightly gulls him with intelligence…..

i.e. appears to the Rival Poet every night and gives him false information….

The Rival Poet has been taught to write…..

……by spirits…..

There is one contemporary writer who fits this description EXACTLY…..

STEP FORWARD GEORGE CHAPMAN!!!

He claimed to have been in contact, all his life, with the spirit of Homer…….

…..who first appeared to him in the most unlikely of places….

 I am, said he, [Homer] that spirit Elysian ,

That (in thy native air; and on the hill

Next Hitchin’s left hand) did thy bosom fill,

With such a flood of soul……

Chapman translated Homer into English…….

…….a version which the poet, John Keats….

…….famously praised in his On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer….

But of even more significance is Chapman’s claim, put forward in the Third Sestiad of Hero and Leander, that he was in contact with……

……..THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE AS WELL!!!

Chapman writes:

Then thou most strangely-intellectual fire,

That proper to my soul hast power t’inspire

Her burning faculties, and with the wings

Of thy unsphered flame, visit’st the springs

Of spirits immortal; now (as swift as Time

Doth follow Motion) find the eternal clime

Of his free soul, whose living subject stood

Up to the chin in the Pirenian flood,

And drunk to me half this Musean story,

Inscribing it to deathless memory:

Confer with it, and make my pledge as deep,

That neither’s draught be consecrate to sleep.

Tell it how much his late desires I tender,

(If yet it know not) and to light surrender

My soul’s dark offspring, willing it should die

The ‘free spirit’ is the gay atheist Marlowe – killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford – who, when ‘living’ certainly stood ‘up to the chin in the Pirenian flood’…..

…….the Macedonian spring sacred to the Muses.

The ‘Musean story’ is a reference to to Museus, who penned the original Hero and Leander story……

…… and Chapman is implying, by pledging ‘half’ of that story to him, that the spirit of Marlowe is asking Chapman to complete the other half of the work himself.

That is Marlowe’s ‘late desire’.

Shakespeare also tells us in Sonnet 86 that the spirit who visits Chapman is…….

…..affable….

….and…..

…..familiar…..

This ties in with Thomas Nashe’s report in Have with Yout to Saffron Walden that Marlowe was…..

……one of my friends that used me like a friend…..

And Shakespeare’s own description of Marlowe in As You Like It as……

……the dead shepherd.

But what makes the identification of Chapman’s ghost certain is the line, also in Sonnet 86, which tells us that the spirit….

 ……nightly gulls……

…..Chapman….

……with intelligence.

In 1587 the Cambridge University authorities were hesitating about awarding Marlowe his degree on the grounds that he was a Catholic who had visited the Papist seminary at Rheims.

The Privy Council intervened, stating that Marlowe, in travelling to Europe….

…..had done her majesty good service…..

….and had been employed……

……in matters touching the benefit of his country…..

Marlowe had clearly been a spy…….

…..and that is why his spirit…..

…. gulls…….

…… Chapman by giving him false…..

 ……intelligence…..

As Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know……

[Trixie the Cat would like to thank ‘Tom’ for discovering that Chapman’s ghost was Christopher Marlowe]

…..Shakespeare sends up Chapman in Love’s Labour’s Lost …..

…..in the figure of the effeminate, lisping, sycophantic Lord Boyet……

 

(See: Boyet – Shakespeare’s Revenge on George Chapman.)

Boyet, on his first appearance,  tells the Princess of France to……

….summon up [her] dearest spirits….

….as though she were conducting a seance…..

….then goes on to flatter her outrageously:

Be now as prodigal of all dear grace

As Nature was in making graces dear

When she did starve the natural world beside,

And prodigally gave them all to you….

The Princess’s response to Boyet’s flattery is identical to Shakespeare’s response to Chapman’s flattery of Harry:

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

Not utter’d by base sale of  chapmen’s tongues….

……and with the phrase ‘base sale of chapmen’s tongues’ the Princess puns on George Chapman’s name….

…..in Shakespeare’s time, ‘chapmen’ were merchants….

The witty, worldly Berowne in the play……

……..who, The Code believes, was first played by the witty, worldly Shakespeare……

………picks up this mercantile imagery when he describes Boyet as…..

……wit’s pedlar who retails his wares

At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets fairs

Shakespeare uses the same idea…..

…….that Chapman = Tradesman….

……..in The Sonnets.

He writes:

That love is merchandised, whose rich esteeming

The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere….[Sonnet 102]

And in Sonnet 21……

I will not praise, that purpose not to sell…..

Even Sonnet 86 which begins…..

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you….

…..and which so many scholars have taken to be a reference to Marlowe’s ‘high’ style……

……contains its own pun…..

SAIL = SALE!!!

………as in The Princess’s…….

…..the base sale of chapmen’s tongues…..

So, Chapman, like The Rival Poet, was gay, was a flatterer, used language in an artificial way , was well-established and spoke to ghosts……

But WAS HE HARD UP?

The answer is a resounding YES!!!

He inherited from his father…….

…..wait for it…….

…..£100 and two silver spoons……

And spent his declining years in poverty and debt…..

‘Bye, now…..

© Trixie the Cat and ‘Thomas X’.

 

Paw-note: The first person to suggest that George Chapman was The Rival Poet (though not always for the same reasons as tabled above!) was William Minto…..

……in 1874….

A Scottish Man of Letters, he was  Professor of Logic and English at The University of Aberdeen….

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To read ‘The Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Why did Shakespeare write The Sonnets?’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (1) Background Jottings, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (2) The Birthday Sonnets, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (3) Was Christopher Marlowe the Rival Poet? please click: HERE