The Shakespeare Code

ANOTHER TRIXIE FIRST!!!

Henry Wrothesley, SECOND Earl of Southampton……..

…….was if anything, even GAYER than his son the Third Earl!!!

He accused his wife, Mary, 2nd Countess of Southampton……

…….of adultery with……

….a common person…….

……seized their young son, Henry (‘Harry’)……

……surrounded himself with……

……..a whole troupe of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen…..tall goodly fellows that kept a constant pace…..

……and, in the bitter words of his estranged Countess….

……..made his manservant his wife…..

When he died in 1581, he left £1,000 (£500,000 in modern money) for two new tombs in St. Peter’s Church, Titchfield….

……..one for his mother and father, the iron-willed Jane, First Countess of Southampton…….

….and Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl of Southampton, Baron of Titchfield….

…….and one, solitary, tomb for himself…..

He wanted it to be a perpetual reminder of his wife’s infidelity….

Mary was having none of it……

Pulling aristocratic strings, she over-turned his will……..

 ……..which even gave guardianship of young Harry to his manservant, Dymock…….

……..and proceeded, for the next thirteen years, to ignore his dying request for the two tombs…..

However, Harry was to come of age on 6th October, 1594. 

He had never got on with his mother………

 …….his father had taught him to despise ALL women………..

……. so in all likelihood, when he gained control of the family finances, he would carry out his father’s wishes….

So Mary got in first…..

In May, 1594, she commissioned………

………. for a fee of £300 as opposed to £1,000 her husband had left……

……….ONE tomb from Garret Johnson……

………..a Flemish refugee who had come to England in 1567……

……….. and who’s son was later to sculpt William Shakespeare’s memorial bust in Stratford-upon-Avon…..

The Southampton tomb was to show Countess Jane lying, in prayer, at the top……

…….an instruction that must have stuck in Mary’s throat.

(Jane had bitterly opposed Mary’s marriage to her son…..

But she would have bitterly opposed ANY marriage to him)

To Jane’s right would lie Thomas Wriothesley, the First Earl of Southampton……

…….and to her left, somewhat incestuously, her son himself…..

(Was this Mary’s revenge? She even got her name and history into the inscription at the back of the tomb!)

The Second Earl is depicted in armour, though he never fought a battle in his life…..

……save his battle for Roman Catholicism……

Like his mother, he remained an unrepentant Papist to the end of his days……

On the side of the tomb, his son, the 3rd Earl,is depicted, opposite his sister, Mary, both kneeling in prayer…….

UNTIL THIS MOMENT IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN ASSUMED THAT HARRY IS DEPICTED IN BOYHOOD…….

……PRAYING FOR THE SOUL OF HIS NEWLY DEPARTED FATHER……

Your Cat is ashamed to say that she had been following all the other scholarly sheep…..

BUT IN ST. PETER’S CHURCH SHE HAD THE LUCK OF THE DEVIL!!!

She was preparing to give one of her famous talks about the Southampton tomb to a HUGE CROWD of Shakespeare pilgrims……..

…… who were making their excited way along the road from London to Titchfield…..

…….when who should suddenly appear in St. Peter’s but her great friend…..

…….the fabulous actress, escapologist, church-watcher and professional tour guide……

…….FIONA LUKAS……

Your Cat seized the moment…..

Fiona, could I give my talk about the Southampton tomb to you? And could you give me some feedback?

With a smile, and with her trademark generosity, the lovely Fiona replied…..

Of course, Trixie, of course….

So I held forth, with Fiona slipping in RED HOT TOUR GUIDE TIPS…..

But when I said that the tomb depicted Southampton in boyhood…..

…….Fiona suddenly cried out……

Hold your horses, Trixie the Cat!  Look again! That’s not a boy. That’s a young man…..

Your Cat did indeed look again……

And the scales fell from her eyes……

Fiona, as ever, was right!

This was not a depiction of the Third Earl when his father died at the age of eight…..

It was a depiction of the Third Earl when the tomb was commissioned at the age of 21!

(We can also see, from her combined crest, that sister Mary, kneeling opposite Harry, is depicted as a married woman, not a child. She married Thomas Lord Arundell, First Baron Wardour in the 1580’s – and had produced a son and heir for him c. 1586)

We do not know whether the likenesses of Jane on the tomb…..

 or her son the Second Earl………

…….are accurate as there are NO OTHER IMAGES TO COMPARE THEM WITH!

(Here’s a full-face photo I took of the Second Earl………….

……by leaping up in to the air!)

However, there ARE two other portraits of Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl…..

One is by Hans Holbein…..

……and the other by an unknown artist, already copied above…….

Here is the ‘Tomb Thomas’ from above……

……another Trixie leap!

To Your Cat, the drooping lips, arched brows and thrusting beard and chin of the tomb……

…..are IDENTICAL to those of the portraits……

Now, we also have portraits of Thomas’s grandson, Harry Southampton, Third Earl……

Here is one by Nicholas Hilliard…..

 

And here is a later one of Harry in armour……

But Tudor portraits sometimes look washed out and flat…..

(Queen Elizabeth didn’t want her wrinkles recorded with too much accuracy…..)

So the tomb gives us the chance to see Harry in 3D…….

………at the age of twenty one…….

………when he was engaged in a full-blown love affair with William Shakespeare…..

No serious scholar now doubts that Shakespeare wrote…….

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

…….to the beautiful young man of the Sonnets…..

……and most scholars………

…….apart from dinosaur homophobes……..

…….now take the young man to be Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton…..

(Please see the Post that the great Stephen Fry tweeted……‘Just how gay was the Third Earl of Southampton’)

So what did Harry REALLY look like as a young man?

What face did Shakespeare see………

……..across the sheets…..

……..when he awoke in the Titchfield dawn?

Your Cat has been able…..

……by squeezing herself tight against the side of the tomb……..

……to take a photo of Harry that no human could ever produce……..

……A LIKENESS THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE…….

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…..

I give you Shakespeare’s young lover……

…….Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield……

Schliemann gazed upon the face of Agamemnon……

Your Cat has gazed upon the face of Shakespeare’s…..

….lovely boy….

‘Bye now…..and thanks again, Fiona….