The Shakespeare Code

(It’s best to read Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five,  Six and Seven first.)

In 1973, when A.L. Rowse discovered the references to Aemilia Lanyer in Simon Forman’s notebooks……

……. he declared that she was the Dark lady of the Sonnets.

In The Shakespeare Code’s view, he was completely right……

But Rowse was way before his time…..

The ‘New Criticism’ still held sway…..

It was based on the ideas of the poet, T.S. Eliot………

…….. and promoted by the Cambridge don, F.R. Leavis.

In his 1921 essay in The Sacred Wood, Eliot stated that….

the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates……

Eliot, great poet that he was, lived a murky personal life……

……….with murky political views…..

…..(Leavis’s wife, Queenie, couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him)……

…..but he didn’t want people to go off his poetry……

….. WHEN THEY WENT OFF HIM!

So he invented the preposterous notion that a writer’s life had NOTHING to do with his work…….

…….and Leavis spread the idea around Cambridge on his bicycle……

…….where some DINOSAURS…..

 BELIEVE IT TO THIS DAY!!!

The great Shakespearean scholar, Prof. Roger Prior……

…….who swam right against this tide…..

……summed up the ‘New Criticism’ succinctly in 1995:

Modern literary criticism is dedicated to removing the author from the text. The authors thoughts and intentions, it is claimed, can never be known , and are in any case quite irrelevant to our understanding of his work. A Shakespeare sonnet may seem to be addressed to the Earl of Southampton, but this may be no more than a clever fictional trope. Or even if we admit that the poem really was intended for the Earl of Southampton, there is not the slightest reason to ‘believe’ what it appears to ‘say’. The literary work of art has nothing to do with the world. It is ‘autonomous’ so that it can allow ‘the free play of the imagination’. From this point of view the desire to know the identity of the young man or the Dark lady is both pointless and vulgar…..

The Shakespeare Code is happy to declare itself both ‘pointless’ and ‘vulgar’…..

How could ANYONE have swallowed this tosh?

The Sonnets, sublime, baffling, complex, loving, poisonous and mundane by turns, are torn from the contradictions of life itself……..

See: Why did William Shakespeare write the Sonnets?

The Shakespeare Code wishes to state quite clearly that it believes……

(1) The ‘lovely boy’ was ‘real’…….

He was Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton……

In Willobie, ‘W.S’ (William Shakespeare) describes ”H. W.’ (Henry Wriothesley) as……

 pale, with Lented cheeks……

…..and a……

…..wanny face and sharpened nose…….

…..just like this carving of him on the Southampton tomb in Titchfield…..

(2) The Dark Lady was ‘real’ as well.

And she was, as Rowse first proposed, Aemilia Lanyer….

[For a full discussion of the subject, read The Bassanos by David Lasocki with Roger Prior, Scolar Press, 1995. Also please consult the work of the brilliant scholar, Martin Green].

So, the question we are asking is this…..

Is Avisa ‘real’ or ‘fained’?

If she is real, is she a self-portrait by Aemilia?

One of the ways to answer this question is to compare Avisa in Willobie…..

….. with the Dark Lady in the Sonnets…..

The Dark Lady, The Code believes, is ‘real’….

…so if Avisa is like her……

…..the odds are Avisa is real as well!!!

•

The fact is, there are HUGE  SIMILARITIES in the love triangle formed between Avisa, ‘H. W.’, and ‘W.S.’ in Willobie his Avisa….

……..and the love triangle formed between The Dark Lady,  Henry Wriothesley and William Shakespeare in the Sonnets….

The Willobie author describes how…..

H.W. [Henry Wriothesley] being suddenly affected with the contagion of a fantastical fit at the first sight of A. [Avisa], pyneth a while in secret grief, at length, not able any longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a humour, bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto his familiar friend W. S. [William Shakespeare] who not long before had tried the courtesy of the like infection……

 Shakespeare, like ‘W.S.’, fell madly in love with the Dark Lady……

…..and in the way Avisa rejected ‘W. S.’…..

….. the Dark Lady rejected William Shakespeare….

In Sonnet 135, Shakespeare writes……

Wilt thou, whose will [pudenda] is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hid my will [penis] in thine?

[‘Will’ at this time could mean both the female and male sexual organ]

Avisa also has a physical mannerism she shares with the Dark Lady…..

SHE IS ALWAYS TURNING HER EYES AWAY FROM HER SUITORS…..

Just like this Sultry Señorita…..

Shakespeare writes in Sonnet 139:

O call me not to justify the wrong

That my unkindness lies upon thy heart;

Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue;

Use power with power and slay me not by art.

Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,

Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside.

What need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might

Is more than my o’er-press’d defense can bide?

Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows

Her pretty looks have been mine enemies

And therefore from my face she turns her foes,

That they elsewhere might dart their injuries…

And Shakespeare concludes Sonnet 140 with….

That I may be so, nor thou belied,

Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide….

Indeed, one of the many attractions of the young Henry Wriothesley to Shakespeare…….

…….was that he might possess…..

……a woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted…..

……but he had an eye that was….

…..less false in rolling….

Avisa, in Willobie his Avisa, has been given……

…..an eye that should entice……

…by the Goddess Diana….

…..and ‘The Caveleiro’ in Willobie says……

And so thou dost, I know it well,

I knew it by thy side-long glance,

Can heart from outward look rebel?

Avisa ripostes:

What wandring fits are these that move

Your heart enraged with every glance:

That judge a woman straight in love

That wields her eye aside by chance…

The Frenchman, ‘D.B’., talks about Avisa’s….

…..smiling face and glancing eye….

And the German ‘D. H.’ says:

While on her eyes my eyes did hang

From rolling eye there sprang a glance

And ‘H.W. ‘ declares……

Your glancing eyes as Cannon shot

Have pierced my heart and freedom got……

And Avisa says:

Then if you strive and stir in vain,

Blame not but fruits of idle brain

If I do sometime look awry

As loathe to see your blobbered face

And loathe to hear a young man cry….

And the Willobie author (Aemilia) tells us that….

……Avisa, having heard this pathetical fancy of H.W. and seeing the tears trill down his cheeks, as half angry to see such passionate folly, in a man that should have government, with a frowning countenance turned from him without farder answer…

Shakespeare himself also refers to Harry Southampton’s propensity to weep in Sonnet 34….

Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,

And they are rich and ransom, and ransom all ill deeds…..

But here the similarity of the Willobie story to the Sonnet story ends….

Aemilia tells us that ‘W.S.’….

……finding his friend [H.W.] let blood in the same vein, he [W.S.] took pleasure for a time to see him bleed and instead of stopping the issue, he enlargeth the wound, with the sharp razor of a willing conceit, persuading him that he thought it very easy to be compassed, & no doubt with pain, diligence and some cost in time to be obtained. Thus this miserable comforter comforting his friend with an impossibility, either for that he would now secretly laugh at his friend’s folly, that had given occasion not long before unto others to laugh at his own, or because he would see whether an other could play his part better than himself, & in viewing afar off the course of this loving comedy, he determined to see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor, then it did for the old player…..

Henry Wriothesley DID pursue the Dark Lady in the way ‘H.W.’ pursued Avisa….

But the difference was that Wriothesley SUCCEEDED with the Dark Lady…..

….(well Shakespeare SUSPECTED he had!)….

……..while ‘H.W.’ failed utterly with Avisa…

Shakespeare, in ‘real’ life, was DISTRAUGHT that Wriothesley had stolen his mistress……

In Sonnet 144 he casts Wriothesley as angel and Aemilia as a devil, tempting Wriothesley from his side…..

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

The better angel is a man right fair [Wriothesley]

The worser spirit, a woman coloured ill.[Aemilia]

To win me soon to Hell my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil

Wooing his purity with her foul pride;[sexuality]

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend

I guess one angel in another’s hell……

‘Hell’ for Shakespeare, can suggest the female genitals…..

…….as it does in King Lear…..

Down from the waist they are Centaurs,

Though women all above.

But to the girdle do the gods inherit,

Beneath is all the fiend’s.

There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit…..

…….as Shakespeare complains to Wriothesley in Sonnet 41….

Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,

And chide try beauty and thy straying youth,

Who lead thee in their riot even there….

So why has Aemilia changed the story?

HER OWN STORY!!!

Why is Avisa chaste…….

……… while the Dark lady is promiscuous?

FOR THE ANSWER, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, READ ON….

BY CLICKING: HERE!