The Shakespeare Code

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

The one big difference between Aemilia and Avisa is this:

Aemilia was a performer….

…..and Avisa was not….

Aemilia came from a musical family and is certain to have been a musician……

…..and William Shakespeare, in Sonnet 128, describes how…..

……when he sees the Dark Lady playing the clavichord….

……he envies…..

…those jacks [keys] that nimble leap,

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand….

We know for certain, from The Description of Cooke-ham…….

…..that Aemilia acted in entertainments  with Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset….

……..in 1604 when Anne was in her teens…..

Aemelia writes to Anne’s mother, Lady Margaret, Dowager Countess of Cumberland……

Remember beauteous Dorset’s former sports,

So far from being touch’d by ill reports;

Wherein my self did always bear a part

While reverend Love presented my true heart.

Anne Clifford – ‘Dorset’ – later went on herself to act herself in Ben Jonson masques at the Court of King James in 1608 and 1609…..

………..and Aemilia obliquely refers to this in her 1611 Dedication….

……and you a glorious Actor will appear

Lovely to all, but unto God most dear.

I know right well these are but needless lines

To you that are so perfect in your part…..

We have traced the influence of Shakespeare in the writings of Aemilia Lanyer….

Every single one of Shakespeare’s plays that Aemilia ‘echoes’ –

….. both in Willobie and Salve…..

…….HAS A CRACKING PART FOR A BLACK ACTRESS!!!…..

In As You Like It there is Audrey…….

…… with her

……inky brows…..black silk hair  [and] bugle eyeballs

……..even if she does have a…..

cheek of cream….

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia……..

……. is described as a….

….raven….Ethiope….and tawny tartar…….

Even Edward III tells his son, the Black Prince that his mother, Queen Philippa…..

…..is but black and thou like her

Dost put it in my mind how foul she is……

And in Edmund Ironside….

…..there is a role for a…..

……black Egyptian

…a phrase Aemilia herself uses in Salve Deus to criticise Cleopatra…..

…….  Yet thou a black Egyptian do’st appear….

(Avisa, it will be remembered, also attacks Cleopatra’s morals in Willobie his Avisa)

But Shakespeare’s most remarkable reference to Aemilia’s dark skin is in Love’s Labour’s Lost…….

Berowne falls in love with Rosaline……

……. a whitely wanton with a velvet brow

With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes…..

[For an explanation of why the dark-skinned Rosaline is described as ‘a whitely wanton’ please see: Shakespeare in Titchfield]

The King of Navarre declares to Berowne:

By heaven, thy love is black as ebony…..

And Berowne ripostes:

O if in black my lady’s brows be decked,

It mourns that painting [make up] and usurping hair [wigs]

Should ravish doters with a false aspect;

And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Her favour turns the fashion of the days,

For native blood is counted painting now;

And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,

Paints itself black to imitate her brow….

This assertion, that black is the new fashion….

……that black is beautiful…….

…… and that black women…….

…….because they do not rely on make-up or wigs…….

…….are superior in beauty to white women……

…….is IDENTICAL to the argument of Sonnet 127:

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;

But now is black beauty’s successive heir,

And beauty slandered with a bastard shame: [wigs and make-up]

For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,

Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,

Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,

But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.

Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,

Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem

At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,

Sland’ring creation with a false esteem:

Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,

That every tongue says beauty should look so.

There can NO DOUBT that Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost is based on the real-life Dark Lady.

And as Aemilia IS the Dark Lady……

…….Rosaline is based on Aemilia.

And if Rosaline is based on Aemilia, who better to PLAY her than Aemilia herself……

We know for certain that women – including aristocratic women – acted in private performances in country houses for Queen Elizabeth on her progresses…….

See: The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.

…….so why shouldn’t Amelia have acted in private, country house performances of Shakespeare’ plays?

In Love’s Labour’s Found (2002)……..

…….. the Code’s Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, argues that Love’s Labour’s Lost was originally performed at Titchfield at Whitsun in 1592.

The plague was raging in London, so there would be every reason, for Aemilia to stay out in Titchfield.

It was there, The Code believes, that the famous ménage-a-trois with Aemilia, Shakespeare and Wriothesley started.

Thomas Nashe………

…….who The Code believes, was also part of the Titchfield set, wrote in Pierce Pennilesse in 1592:

…….fear of infection detained me with my Lord in the country….I am the plague’s prisoner in the country as yet……

……and in the following year, in his dedication to The Unfortunate Traveller, Nashe described Wriothelsey as…..

………a lover and cherisher…..as well of the lovers of poets [i.e. Aemilia] as of poets themselves [i.e. Shakespeare]……

Shakespeare, like Berowne, fell in love with Aemilia and publicly declared his feelings for her in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Wriothesley became jealous –

HE wanted to be the object of Shakespeare’s attention……

Shakespeare asked Wriothesley to plead his love-case with Aemilia……

And Aemilia took the opportunity of seducing the young lord……

Shakespeare complains to Aemilia about what she has done in Sonnet 134:

So, now I have confess’d that he [Wriothesley] is thine [Aemilia’s]

And I myself am mortgaged to thy will [pudenda]

Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine [Wriothesley]

Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still:

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art covetous and he is kind;

He learn’d but surety-like to write for me [be my proxy-wooer]

Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou usurer,[money lender = prostitute] that put’st forth all to use [will make love to anybody]

And sue a friend [Wriothesley] came debtor for my sake [to argue my love-suit]

Shakespeare was then forced to admit that he was more in love with the young man than he was with the young woman….

In Sonnet 42 he writes to Wriothesley……

That thou hast her [Aemilia], it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;

That she hath thee,[Wriothesley]is of my wailing chief,

A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Aemilia herself was the final victim of all this…..

She told Forman in 1597 that she had had many…..

….. false conceptions……

…i.e….miscarriages…..

……which had enabled her to carry on her affair with Lord Hunsdon and other Lords with impunity……

But in the Plague Year of 1592 she finally fell pregnant……..

….and as we know she was married….

…..’for colour’ to the ‘minstrel’ Alfonso Lanyer  on18th October, at St. Botolph’s, Aldgate.

She had a son who was called Henry…….

…..whether after Henry Hunsdon or Henry Wriothesley  we may never know….

Hunsdon continued to support his ex-mistress financially…….

……..but by marrying a mere Court Musician, she was no longer part of the aristocratic establishment.

She performed the rôle of Hermia two years later in 1594…..

….after a long space of absence…..

……as she writes in Willobie his Avisa….

…….and took the opportunity of reviving the old love-triangle…

By then she had married in a Christian church……

……as many in her Jewish family had to do…..

……for ‘colour’…….

But Aemilia started to take the Christian faith seriously…..

And even Shakespeare refers to her….

….bed vow broke….

….i.e. her wedding vow….

….and new faith torn…..

…..i.e. her ‘new’ Christian faith….

But by the end of 1594 she was in a desperate state…

We know from what she later said to Forman that her husband…..

……dealt hardly with her and spent and consumed her goods

….and she’d had to move from a ‘mistress’ lifestyle of four servants and four horses….

…..to a ‘wife and mother’ lifestyle of economy and penury…..

But she supported her husband’s endeavours to become a knight…..

………so that she could become a ‘lady’….

…….and enter ‘society’ again…

She wanted to mother another child….

So she now needed a measure of respectability….

But Shakespeare had been circulating his poisonous sonnets about her….

In Sonnet 147 he had written:

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night…

In Willobie Aemilia refers to….

My sleepy Muse that wakes but now

Nor now had wak’t if one had slept…

i.e. she was simply retaliating to the attack by Shakespeare.

She needed to muffle him…….

……..she needed money…….

……. and she wanted revenge for being dropped….

……..not only by Hunsdon…..

…..but by the whole Southampton entourage…..

Enter Sir Walter Raleigh……

To find out what happened when Sir Walter entered, click: HERE.