The Shakespeare Code

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code,

In Your Cat’s Last Post…..

…….’Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets (4): The Rival Poet Revealed’…..

…..Your Cat wrote……

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 spirit contact, all his life, with the ghost 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….’

●

Now all this is true……

But Your Cat began to get an itch under her collar……

Why should William Shakespeare describe Homer as……

……affable……

……and……….

……familiar…….

……and why should Homer…..

…..nightly gull…….

…..Chapman…..

….with intelligence…..?

Your Cat was at her desk in Head Office, musing on these problems, when the door suddenly flew open…

It was our new Agent……

……codename ‘Thomas X’….

……fresh from a secret assignement in Heidelberg…….

Your Cat CANNOT of course reveal his true name or identity……

……but it would be CRUEL to The Sisters of The Code….

…..and indeed a GOODLY NUMBER of The Brothers…….

…..to withold from them what ‘Tom’ looks like……

‘What’s up, Trix?’ he cried…..

…..like all sexy men, ‘Tom’ is deeply intuitive…..

‘I’m worried about Chapman’s ghost, ‘Tom’….The evidence SHOULD stack up – but somehow it doesn’t…..

Does Homer LOOK ‘affable’……

….. or even  ‘familar’?

And what’s the ‘intelligence’ he ‘gulls’ Chapman with…..?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Tom beamed,‘I’ll fix it in a trix…..

……That’s why The Code employs me…..’

He then jumped down the staircase, frog-leapt onto his Harley Davidson…….

…..and was roaring off to The London Library before you could say…..

……Notes Towards a Definition of Culture…..

Within the HOUR he was bounding back up the stairs…..

…..his leathers creaking…..

‘Got it, Trix’  he cried…….

……and held up a battered tome….

And got it ‘Tom’ had!

He had remembered, from his Cambridge University days……

……..where he took a Double First in English…….

……..and gained a Fencing Blue…..

……..that there was a mysterious passage in George Chapman’s Hero and Leander…..

……..a continuation of the poem Marlowe had begun before he got killed in a gay Deptford brawl..….

(See: Was Christopher Marlowe the Rival Poet? )

‘Tom’ leapt onto my desk and declaimed:

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

To loves, to passions and society.

‘Tom’ gave a whoop of delight!

‘Get it, Trix?’

I did ‘get it’. 

But I also wanted ‘Tom’ to have his moment of glory…….

So I shook my head…….

And Tom took off…….

……his mind sharp and bright as the studs in his belt and wristbands….

‘Chapman is describing how……….

……..as well as being in contact with the spirit of Homer…..

……..he is ALSO IN CONTACT WITH THE SPIRIT OF MARLOWE!!!

Marlowe is the….

…..free spirit…..

……who, while he was a…….

…..living subject…….

……certainly……

…….stood up to the chin in the Pirenian flood…….’

‘Tom’ paused, then added, cheekily:

‘You don’t know what a Pirenian flood is, do you Trixie?

Young ‘Tom’ clearly needed taking down a peg or two…..

‘Is it by any chance the spring in Macedonia consecrated to the Muses? ‘ I replied……

……..of which Alexander Pope wrote…….

……..Drink deep, or taste not…….

……..famously making his point that………

…….a little learning is a dangerous thing…..

I might have started off in an alley, ‘Tom’, but I didn’t stay there……’

Tom reddened……

……..then sheepishly climbed down from my desk.

He stood facing me, eyes lowered, as though I were his Headmistress……

……and he were a schoolboy…..

Beneath his tight denim jeans there clearly lurked a fragile, wounded soul…..

A soul Your Cat needed to nurture and cherish….

‘Look , Tom,’ I purred, ‘this is an ASTONISHING discovery you’ve made…..

No scholar – to my knowlege – has suggested this before…..

Not the editor of the Arden edition of the Sonnets…..

Not even the great DOVER WILSON himself……

Shakespeare describes Marlowe as the……

…….. dead shepherd……

……..and even bitchy Tom Nashe wrote that Marlowe was…..

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

So Shakespeare would have every reason to describe Marlowe’s ghost as ‘affable’ and ‘familiar’….’

My praise worked: ‘Tom’ bounced back into life….

‘My theory’, he exclaimed,  ‘also explains why Chapman’s ghost……

 ……gulls……

……him…..

…… nightly with intelligence…..

Marlowe, when he was a student, worked for the government as a spy…..

That’s how, as a spirit, he could…..

 …..gull….

….. Chapman with……

……intelligence….

……which is false…..

‘Tom’, now, was beaming at me…..

……back to his cocky self…

‘How about a reward, Trix?’ he smirked……

……..then put his hands, firmly but gently, beneath my front legs……

……. swept me into the air…..

……held his lips very close to mine……

……and closed his eyes……

I scratched his cheek.

He yelled and dropped me.

‘Your reward will be to help me revise my Last Post,’ I said.

 ‘Tom’ rushed to the mirror on the wall to examine his face…..

‘Tell your  lovers it’s a dueling scar from Heidelberg…….

……I added helpfully…..

‘Now come and sit next to me and let’s get on with it…..’

‘Tom’  hesitated for a second……

Then obeyed…..

And, Brothers and Sisters of The Code, if you would like to read what we came up with, please click: HERE.

‘Bye, now…..